The age of autonomous AI is here, and it’s bringing a new challenge for every organization: your APIs, the very foundation of your digital business, are now facing the scrutiny of an AI agent. For those of us already invested in MuleSoft, this is both a huge opportunity and a governance task. Our existing assets are perfect for fueling AI, but they were built for developers and applications—not for Large Language Models (LLMs). This distinction is vital, because an LLM consuming a traditional API directly often leads to non-deterministic actions and unreliable outcomes, contributing to what is known as “agent sprawl”. The solution? Transforming your current APIs into “Agent-Ready” assets using the MuleSoft Agent Fabric. This Fabric acts as the connective tissue, providing the centralized governance and orchestration needed to turn fragmented AI efforts into a cohesive, trusted network.
Here is your practical, four-step checklist to prepare your MuleSoft ecosystem for the Agent Fabric today.
Step 1: Discover and Catalog (The Agent Registry Blueprint)
You can’t govern what you can’t see. The first step in creating Agent-Ready APIs for the Agent Fabric is achieving universal visibility of every capability your enterprise exposes. This is done by transforming your traditional API Catalog into an AI Asset Registry via the MuleSoft Agent Registry.
The Agent Registry is the centralized catalog within Anypoint Exchange that now supports all AI assets alongside your existing APIs. Centralization is crucial because it promotes reuse and ensures that every AI tool—whether built in-house or embedded in a SaaS application—is discoverable by other agents and developers.
Implementation of Automate Cataloging
To bring your existing, widespread APIs into the Agent Fabric governance framework, you need to catalog them formally. The most scalable way to do this is by leveraging the API Catalog Command Line Interface (CLI). This tool is designed to automatically discover API specifications and metadata, and can be easily integrated into your existing CI/CD pipelines. This ensures Anypoint Exchange acts as the single source of truth, giving agents a complete, verifiable list of tools they can trust.
Step 2: Define Actions and Instructions (Semantic Context via Topics)
A traditional API simply tells a human what data is available (e.g., /GET /customer/{id}). An agent-ready API must tell the LLM how to act. This is the semantic gap you need to bridge, and it’s accomplished using the Topic Center.
Topics are structured bundles of specific actions and detailed sets of instructions that provide the explicit context required for an Agentforce agent to complete a task autonomously.
The Role of Instructions and Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) aims to provide a standardized, unified schema for APIs to expose data to AI systems. MuleSoft provides MCP Support that allows you to transform your existing Mule applications and APIs into MCP servers, often with just “a few clicks”.
Crucially, you must annotate your API specification (OpenAPI/RAML) with specific metadata to control the agent’s behavior:
- Scope: Narrowly defines the agent’s job (e.g., “Your job is to only handle tasks related to setting a closing strategy to close deals”).
- Classification Description: A plain-text summary the Agent Broker uses to determine when the Topic is relevant to a user’s request.
- Instructions: Non-deterministic guidelines that dictate how the agent executes its bundled actions (e.g., “Always clarify X before using Y function”).
By annotating your API with the following extensions (x-sfdc), you gain granular control over the agent-human interaction cycle :
Semantic Metadata Annotations for Agent Actions (Step 2 Implementation)
| Extension | Purpose | Value | Placement Scope |
x-sfdc/agent/action/publishAsAgentAction | Enables API operation as a callable Agent Action. | true | Operation Level (Required) |
x-sfdc/agent/action/isUserInput | Indicates if a parameter requires interactive user input. | true/false | Parameter/Schema Level (Required) |
x-sfdc/agent/action/isDisplayable | Controls if output property data should be displayed to the user. | true/false | Schema/Property Level (Required) |
x-sfdc/privacy/isPii | Flags schema content as Personally Identifiable Information. | true/false | Schema/Property Level (Optional) |
Step 3: Secure and Govern (Flex Gateway Policy Enforcement)
Autonomous agents break the traditional client-server security model because they can act as both the client and the server in a single interaction. As you scale to orchestrate “thousands of agents,” governance becomes non-negotiable.
Flex Gateway Support for MCP & A2A is the high-performance gateway that extends MuleSoft’s governance to secure and inspect all agent-to-system (A2S) and agent-to-agent (A2A) flows.
The Bidirectional Protection Checklist:
To ensure security across dynamic interactions within the Agent Fabric, you need two types of gateways deployed:
- Ingress Flex Gateway: Enforces policies on traffic coming into the broker and API endpoints.
- Egress Flex Gateway: Enforces policies on traffic leaving brokers and agents toward external services.
This dual layer of protection allows you to apply enterprise-grade guardrails using specialized policies:
| Policy Type | Target Protocol | Description | Primary Benefit for Agents |
| A2A PII Detector | A2A/A2S (Bidirectional) | Detects and handles Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in agent requests and responses. | Compliance and Data Privacy |
| A2A Prompt Decorator | A2A/A2S (Ingress) | Modifies the agent’s behavior by injecting custom context or instructions into prompts. | Contextual Accuracy and Behavioral Control |
| A2A Schema Validation | MCP/A2A | Ensures data exchange conforms strictly to required specifications, eliminating malformed requests. | Deterministic Reliability and Error Prevention |
| Spike Control/Rate Limiting | Inbound | Regulates traffic volume to protect backend systems from erroneous or malicious surges. | Performance and System Resilience |
| SSE Logging | Inbound/Outbound | Logs all events streamed by agents for audit and compliance purposes. | Auditability and Compliance Tracking |
Step 4: Visualize and Optimize (Agent Visualizer Observability)
With agents now executing actions autonomously, you need transparency to build trust. The MuleSoft Agent Visualizer provides the dedicated observability layer needed to monitor, audit, and continuously optimize your agent workforce.
Visualizer transforms complex, multi-agent workflows into an interactive, visual map. This gives architects and IT teams complete situational awareness—you can see all connected agents, their relationships, and the direction of calls.
Focusing on Trust and Optimization:
| Capability | Focus Area | Optimization Insight |
| Dynamic Network Map | Architecture & Dependencies | Identify dependencies, map key pathways, and eliminate shadow IT. |
| Decision Trace | Audit & Transparency | Understand the “why” behind agent outcomes by illuminating the decision-making process. |
| Real-Time Call Volume | Performance & Capacity | Validate consumption patterns and identify under- or overused connections and bottlenecks. |
| Governance Gap Display | Security & Compliance | Visualize precisely which agents are protected by Flex Gateways and policies. |
| Health Monitoring & Metrics | Proactive Maintenance | Detect bottlenecks and hallucination risks before they occur; link directly to Anypoint Monitoring for KPIs. |
The ability to visualize governance gaps is essential for compliance teams, allowing you to instantly assess security coverage across the entire fabric. Furthermore, by linking nodes in the Visualizer to metrics in Anypoint Monitoring, you gain a 30-day lookback period for operational data, allowing you to pinpoint issues and troubleshoot failures faster.
A Practical Roadmap for Immediate Implementation
The transition to the Agent Fabric is not a full-scale migration; it’s a focused transformation of high-value assets. By following these four steps, you immediately begin leveraging your existing MuleSoft investment to power your AI strategy:
- Start with Discovery: Use the API Catalog CLI to achieve universal visibility and establish the Agent Registry as the single source of truth for all assets.
- Focus on Semantic Context: Identify 3-5 core business APIs and use the Topic Center and MCP Support to define their actions, scope, and instructions, effectively creating a semantic contract for the AI.
- Mandate Bidirectional Security: Deploy Ingress and Egress Flex Gateways and apply essential policies like the A2A PII Detector to secure the agent ecosystem against the unique risks of autonomous traffic.
- Turn on Transparency: Activate the Agent Visualizer to audit the performance and decision-making of your first agent actions, building trust and informing optimization efforts.
By treating Topics as the new AI contract and mandating security across every agent interaction, you build a sustainable foundation that enables safe, governed, and scalable AI execution.
We are a trusted MuleSoft Premier Partner, Value Added Reseller, and System Integrator with 10+ years of experience in the digital connectivity and integration space. We work with businesses to build connected and integrated ecosystems. Ready to Activate Your Agentic Enterprise? Contact us
