AI Vocabulary · 06 Own Your AI
What is Open Standards?
Publicly documented formats and protocols anyone can use, so your data and integrations can move between tools.
An open standard is a format or protocol that is publicly documented and free for anyone to implement. Email, PDF, Markdown and HTTP are everyday examples. In AI, MCP for connecting tools, common API formats that many providers copy, and open model file formats play a similar role.
Standards matter because they decouple you from any single vendor. If your knowledge, integrations and workflows are built on shared formats, a different tool can read them tomorrow.
Why it matters for you
The AI market changes every few months. Choosing tools that import and export open formats keeps your options open and makes switching a project, not a crisis.
Own it
When you evaluate a tool, ask: can I export everything in a standard format? Does it connect via open protocols? Prefer the answer "yes" even if a closed tool looks slightly better today. It is the cheapest insurance against vendor lock-in.
Where it comes from
Open standards are as old as networking, but the web made them famous: Tim Berners-Lee founded the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1994 so that the web's core technologies would stay open and shared. The same idea now shapes AI, for example with the Model Context Protocol for connecting tools. Wikipedia: Open standard
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