sinab4 hours ago
The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces.
But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later.
Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need permission to read a standard.
mips_avatar7 hours ago
As far as I can tell is these standards (MCP/MHS/etc) are just semi obvious tool inferfaces that Anthropic uses as training scenarios.
jauntywundrkind6 hours ago
MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years.
They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care much about protocols until they have to (MCP's incredibly long redemption ark). The vibes are all off.
Maybe they avoid laying their own pitfalls this time. Maybe it's better. It'd be nice to start seeing some kind of cause to trust this company as vaguely capable computer-using people. But so far that hasn't been the case.
AYBABTMEan hour ago
I think they're doing this so they can have months of advanced notice of how the protocol will look, to post-train their models to be the only ones with the ability to interact with this protocol on the day it becomes public.
It's like creating conditions for a race where they structurally have months of advance. And realistically they have a credible shot at establishing the standard due to their weight in the industry, and control of the most popular AI distribution method (Claude).
So they create the race, knowing the race is what will likely establish the standard, and using some pretext to prevent other competitive athletes from training for it in advance. Other athletes only get to start when the gun fires.
dgellow5 hours ago
I think I agree. I find it a little bit annoying that they do not start by a survey of the existing landscape, discuss the issues and what works well, and spend the effort to show that they can indeed to be trusted as the authority behind such a protocol expected to become standard. For MCP, it started very messy, but from what I understand it was developed by a small team within the company working on internal tooling, for their own use case, I think it’s reasonable to expect something a bit awkward, I don’t think they expected its success
DetroitThrow5 hours ago
It's a bit of both for Anthropic I think, sometimes cutting edge and quite interesting or just good improvements, sometimes ignoring best practices either recently established or known for decades. Obvious to see where the smart people are in high places at the company.
dgellow7 hours ago
It’s actually really cool, and not just for AI. That should make it easy to automate some processes with simple scripts.
Nitpick: it’s annoying that they add Model to those acronyms, for what seems like a fairly universal software interface
Animats6 hours ago
How does this compare to ROS 2? Roughly the same goals.
foltik16 minutes ago
Cool story Dario, call me when Claude supports AGENTS.md.
solenoid093713 minutes ago
If you can't prompt Claude to set up a symlink you probably shouldn't be using Claude.
foltik9 minutes ago
If they can’t prompt Claude to implement such a trivial standard, they probably shouldn’t be proposing standards.
automationwiz7 hours ago
Sounds like PyLabRobot:
shay_ker4 hours ago
How is this different from tool calls? Or rather, MCP?
randomblock15 hours ago
To me, this seems like OPC UA / SiLA but instead of being software <-> machine semantics/control it's AI <-> machine semantics/control. Or in simpler terms, an AI-facing hardware abstraction / device-description standard.
This is how I understand it:
Agent <-> MCP/CLI/code <-> MHS <-> vendor API/SCPI/OPC UA/ROS/etc <-> CAN/Modbus/USB/etc <-> hardware
MHS can describe capabilites, metadata, safety limits, as well as provide read/write control and discovery. Things like "can measure temperature", "arm weighs X kg", "never exceed X RPM", that agents can easily understand. (as opposed to that being buried in a datasheet somewhere, or having to be included in the prompt)
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPC_Unified_Architecture, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_in_Lab_Automat..., https://xkcd.com/927/
[deleted]5 hours agocollapsed
builddifferenti5 hours ago
Hardware-speech synthesis breakdown and decline
jedbrooke7 hours ago
To actually add something to the discussion though: I guess getting LLMs to control robots is cool, but would potentially have more severe consequences than pure software since it interacts more with the physical world
tolugenius8 hours ago
I don't want to be that guy but did they invent bluetooth for ai? Like what is MHS actually? I read it twice and still don't get it
heisenzombie5 hours ago
There are MANY packages in this space: Labs love to invent their own versions powered by the hubris of grad students. Anyway a random sampling of some I’ve come across is:
- EPICS
- TANGO
- Bluesky (not that one)
- QCodes
- Sardana
- yaq
Anthropic seem to be creating the n+1 version of those packages and presumably doing some harness work to make Claude good at using it.
storywatch7 hours ago
More like MCP for robotics. IMO they are better off getting the robots to use existing human UIs than trying to get hardware manufacturers to play ball.
tolugenius7 hours ago
Oh I see, yeah I guess this assumes manufacturers will just adopt this standard universally. Clears things a bit!
cookiengineer6 hours ago
What is the difference of MHS to MCP when it comes to features?
The whole text reads like everything is just a gRPC call that could've also been implemented with an MCP based wrapper.
written-beyond7 hours ago
That 2 trillion dollar valuation ain't gonna make itself.
numpad06 hours ago
It's hard to make LLMs read the manual for an invented language and have them improvise on the spot(1-shot). An established language or a command set that can be included in the training set to be used off top of their head is a lot more reliable and efficient.
The caveat is that actual utility of this particular command set isn't clear yet. Or how many LLM labs will find it worthwhile.
tuvix7 hours ago
In the context of lab hardware there’s a ton of proprietary software and barriers to automating things. I think this is less about how to communicate, and more guaranteeing that “yes, this piece of hardware can interface with an agent” and is meant to do so. Kind of like using MCP vs letting your agent make raw HTTP requests
sheauwn7 hours ago
It seems more like a basic instruction set, that will then be translated to something actionable for each different device. Seems like most of the work then will be in developing the drivers for whatever devices you want the LLM to access.
ctoth7 hours ago
Yes, it turns the hardware driver problem into a translation problem (translate the hardware manual/datasheet into this protocol.)
Guess what's really good/quick at translating things?
tantalor5 hours ago
"standard" is doing a lot of work here
dude2507115 hours ago
Are they in a position to define any kind of standards?
bigcat123456785 hours ago
So far Anthropic shows remarkable taste in research, engineering, and product. Dario the ideologist attracts the most pure-minded talent in the industry. It indeed looks like Anthropic would be unchallenged for the foreseeable future. It'll be very interesting to see its downfall in 5-20 years.
hypfer5 hours ago
5-20 years?
Have you seen the financials of the AI companies?
solenoid093711 minutes ago
Do you have inside information we don't?
_diyar4 hours ago
OAI and ANT are private, so I sure haven‘t seen their books.