WebMCP, the EU AI Act and careers

Why this conversation

Conferences are where engineers pick up the ideas that reach their own systems a few months later. At the first AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe in Amsterdam, the host asked Olivier Calzi, a CNCF Golden Kubestronaut who runs Calzi Consulting, what he was taking home from the day. His answer covered a new way for agents to read the web, the regulation that European companies now have to follow, and what AI is doing to careers and job interviews.

The story of the week it was filmed is in AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe 2026: who we met.

What WebMCP changes

Olivier’s first takeaway was WebMCP, which he had learned about that day. As he understood it, WebMCP gives agents a natural interface to a website: the site owner exposes parts of the site to agents, so that an agent browsing on a user’s behalf can give that user a better answer. The second was governance: how to distribute skills, tools and MCP access to end users securely, at the scale of an industry.

Asked whether this is the next step after scraping, he compared it to the file that has long told search crawlers which parts of a site they may index, extended for agents. The difference is that the site now willingly exposes its information to agents, much as it would optimise for a good place in Google search, whether the content is a shop or anything else. He sees it as a path towards payments made by agents, and thinks the change is not finished.

The EU AI Act

Governance matters in Europe, and the host asked about the EU AI Act. There was not much news, Olivier said, beyond its application starting within weeks, with some arrangements running until December, if he had understood it correctly.

The more important point for him is organisational. GDPR created the role of the data protection officer. He thinks companies will now need an AI officer to make sure they follow the AI Act, so that engineers are safe in how they deliver software, and the users who consume the products are protected too. The Cyber Resilience Act is also on its way.

Careers and interviews with AI in the loop

For people entering the industry, Olivier thinks the change is unlike anything seen before. The old route was a fixed path: start as a support engineer, become a systems engineer, and move up from there. Now there are many tools for reaching a goal. With focus and a plan, and a way to show your skills efficiently, you may get the job more easily.

The other side is that hiring itself gets harder. He has heard from architects who interviewed a candidate over a video call: the candidate spoke like a robot, because an AI overlay on his screen was answering the questions. Olivier expects interviews to become more like certification exams, with a proctor and a secure environment to make sure the answers are not coming from an AI.

How does he keep up? You do not have to, he says, if you are happy where you are and follow the direction your department sets. But if you want to keep up with what is developing, you have to stay curious and have fun learning new things. Fun and will create opportunities, and that is what happened for him.