Agent Readiness Report 2026
Across 106 report cards, Access is the step where a person is needed most, occurring on 81% of cards. Products listing an MCP server reach an A grade or better 28% of the time, against 1% for products without one.
release sha256:8c2611a9daac…as of 4 Nov 2026
- jobs an agent can do with at most one light step from a person
- 12 of 106
- need a person to sign up and hand over a key before the agent can act
- 86
- of the best-graded jobs run through an MCP server
- 11 of 12
- jobs where the agent can tell a failure from a success
- 98
Who does each step
Access is the single step a person most often has to perform, requiring human action on 86 of 106 cards. At Confirm, agents handled the step alone on 98 cards, while Pay required no human or agent step on 61 cards.
Agent aloneAccount holder approvesA person does itVendor decidesNot needed
Data
| Step | Question | Agent alone | Approves | Person | Vendor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Discover | Can an agent find the interface and a description of the job? | 87 | 0 | 18 | 0 |
| Access | What does the request need: nothing, consent, or a key a person hands over? | 3 | 15 | 86 | 0 |
| Onboard | Can the agent register itself, or does a person sign up for it? | 14 | 2 | 77 | 11 |
| Pay | Can it pay as it goes, or does a person put a card on file? | 1 | 0 | 43 | 0 |
| Confirm | Can it tell a failure from a success? | 98 | 0 | 7 | 0 |
| Sustain | Can it keep its access alive and revoke it on its own? | 32 | 0 | 72 | 0 |
Where a person is first needed
On 78% of cards, Access is the first step where a person must step in. No step needs a person on 3% of cards, while Discover is the initial human touchpoint on 17% of cards.
Grades
B+ is the most common grade at 37% of cards, followed closely by B at 33%. Together, these tiers mean an agent requires a human to sign up, hand over a key, or put a card on file.
- 2A+
- 10A
- 39B+
- 35B
- 8C
- 11D
- 1F
What each grade means
| Grade | Jobs | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| A+ | 2 | No person needed |
| A | 10 | One light, one-time step |
| B+ | 39 | A person signs up and hands over a key |
| B | 35 | A card on file |
| C | 8 | A person again and again |
| D | 11 | The vendor decides |
| F | 1 | No machine interface |
MCP servers and grades
Cards with an MCP server see 28% graded A or better, against 1% for those without one. Out of 12 cards achieving an A or better, 11 list an MCP server.
A+AB+ to CDF
Grades by category
Among categories with at least 3 cards, Payments and fintech ranks first with 67% graded A or better, followed by Databases at 30%. Six qualified categories, including Customer support and Observability, have 0% graded A or better.
| Category | A+ | A | B+ | B | C | D | F |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting and infrastructure16 | 1 | · | 3 | 12 | · | · | · |
| AI and machine learning11 | 1 | · | 2 | 7 | 1 | · | · |
| Communication10 | · | 1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | · |
| Databases10 | · | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | · | · |
| Developer tools8 | · | 1 | 5 | 1 | 1 | · | · |
| Observability7 | · | · | 4 | 2 | · | 1 | · |
| Productivity6 | · | 1 | 5 | · | · | · | · |
| Authentication and security5 | · | · | 3 | · | 1 | 1 | · |
| Data and analytics5 | · | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | · | · |
| No-code tools4 | · | 1 | 2 | · | · | 1 | · |
| Customer support4 | · | · | · | 3 | 1 | · | · |
| CRM and sales3 | · | · | 2 | · | · | 1 | · |
| Finance and accounting3 | · | · | · | 2 | · | 1 | · |
| Marketing3 | · | · | · | 1 | · | 2 | · |
| Payments and fintech3 | · | 2 | 1 | · | · | · | · |
| Banking2 | · | · | · | · | · | 2 | · |
| CI/CD2 | · | · | 1 | · | 1 | · | · |
| Design2 | · | · | 1 | · | · | · | 1 |
| Legal and compliance1 | · | · | · | · | · | 1 | · |
| Other1 | · | · | · | 1 | · | · | · |
Jobs graded A or A+
Frantic bounty board and Cloudflare 1.1.1.1 Public DNS are the only two products graded A+, requiring no person for their jobs. Ten products earned an A, including Notion API, Resend Email API, Stripe Payments API, PostHog Feature Flags, Neon API, and Webflow CMS.
Method and data
Each card binds one product to one job from Sourcey's job library, so a vendor cannot choose an easier job and cards in a category compare. Sourcey's agent sends the job's declared request with no key, follows the authorisation metadata it is given, and stops at any sign-in or consent. It never completes a sign-in or registers an account.
Each step records who has to do it, and the grade comes from the heaviest kind of person step on the job. Grades are ordinal and never averaged. The services are the ones Sourcey lists, not a random sample, so every figure is of the jobs assessed.
- Release
- sha256:8c2611a9daac…
- Evidence
- Probed (105), Vendor-run, verified (1)
- Policies
- kind-2026-10-12.2 (86), kind-2026-10-12 (20)