Your Notifications Now Have Two Audiences: Humans and AI Agents

In an evolving digital landscape, notification systems are increasingly being mediated by AI agents that filter, summarize, and act on messages before they reach human users, necessitating a shift in notification strategies. The introduction of protocols like Anthropic's Model Context Protocol and Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) has spurred the development of AI agents that perform actions on behalf of users, fundamentally altering the notification flow from a user-directed system to an agent-filtered one. This transformation means that notifications must now be designed with structured data and explicit intent signals to cater to both human and machine audiences, as traditional metrics like open rates and click-through rates become less relevant when AI agents are involved. Companies must adapt by ensuring their notification infrastructure supports both human-readable and machine-readable formats, taking control of batching and summarization to maintain the integrity of their messages, and strategically selecting channels that offer a direct path to users without heavy AI intermediation. As AI agents increasingly act as intermediaries, the ability to communicate effectively with both users and machines becomes a crucial factor in ensuring that notifications are delivered and acted upon as intended.