Should AI agents use a unified API or native APIs?

AI agents face challenges when using unified APIs due to limitations in handling vendor-specific query languages, permission models, and internal hierarchies, which are better addressed by native APIs. Unified APIs often struggle in scenarios such as needing specific vendor languages like JQL or SOQL, where the unified model's generic structure does not suffice, and in scenarios involving complex permissions or hierarchical data access. The issue of intersection-only schemas, where unified APIs only expose common fields among all integrations, further complicates their utility, potentially reducing the richness of data available to the AI agent. However, solutions like Unified.to offer a Passthrough API that allows agents to access native endpoints without leaving the connection, thus mitigating some of the limitations by maintaining the original object ID and enabling field-level access. The debate on whether to use unified or native APIs depends on the specific task requirements and whether both can operate under the same authorized connection, with considerations for context window efficiency and alignment with an AI model's training data.

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