From APIs to MCPs: Making Microservices Agent-Ready with Semantic Context
LLM agents don’t just fetch data—they decide and act. To support planning and chaining, microservices must expose not only endpoints but also semantic context: what entities mean, which states are valid, which actions come next, and why decisions were made. This talk shows how to evolve from data-only APIs to MCP-aware, semantically rich services using JSON-LD/Schema.org, Hydra-style affordances, domain events, and OpenAPI metadata. You’ll learn retrofit vs greenfield paths, see cross-industry demos, and leave with a migration checklist that makes your services truly agent-ready.
Agenda
- Why MCPs matter: the “USB-C for AI apps.”
- Gaps in data-only APIs: no semantics, state, or lineage.
- Adding semantics: JSON-LD, Hydra, enriched OpenAPI, domain events.
- How agents benefit: safer chaining, fewer errors, explainability.
- Implementation paths: retrofit vs MCP-native.
- Use cases & demos: retail discounts, manufacturing sensors, insurance risk, healthcare consent.
Takeaways
- MCPs transform APIs into agent-collaborators, not just data pipes.
- Semantic context = better planning, safer automation, fewer hallucinations.
- Practical roadmap: enrich existing APIs or design new ones MCP-native.
About Rohit Bhardwaj
Rohit Bhardwaj is a Director of AI & Data Architecture at Salesforce, where he focuses on enterprise AI, agentic systems, cloud-native architecture, distributed systems, data platforms, security, and large-scale transformation.
Over his career, Rohit has designed and led complex enterprise platforms across AWS, Google Cloud, microservices, real-time data, API ecosystems, resilient distributed systems, and AI-enabled architectures. His work increasingly focuses on the challenges enterprises face as software evolves from deterministic services to AI-native and agentic systems—particularly around reliability, governance, evidence, security, observability, cost, and safe autonomy.
Rohit is the author of System Design with AI Interview Guide: Designing Scalable, Agentic, and Defensible Systems, published by Apress. The book presents a modern approach to system design covering scalability, distributed systems, AI architecture primitives, security, reliability, economics, agentic systems, and real-world architectures including e-commerce, ride sharing, payments, fraud detection, messaging, video streaming, file storage, and search. (Springer Link)
Book:
Amazon: https://a.co/d/09Zs1twa
Publisher / Springer Nature: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/979-8-8688-2782-2
O'Reilly: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/system-design-with/9798868827822/
Rohit is also an O’Reilly instructor and a frequent speaker at technology conferences including No Fluff Just Stuff, UberConf, GIDS, and other international events. His talks focus on practical architecture lessons from building and operating complex systems, including AI control planes, trusted agents, inference at scale, evidence-first RAG, AI security, distributed-system failure, and AI-era software architecture.
As a trusted advisor and architecture leader, Rohit works at the intersection of business strategy and deep technical architecture—helping teams translate complex business problems into scalable, resilient, secure, and economically sustainable systems.
Rohit holds an MBA in Corporate Entrepreneurship from Babson College and graduate-level education in Computer Science from Boston University and Harvard University.
Connect with Rohit:
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/rohit-bhardwaj-cloud
X / Twitter: @rbhardwaj1