Will SaaS replace capability marketplaces for AI agents?

Hi everyone 👋

I’ve been thinking about the future of AI agents and had a question for builders here.

As agents become more capable, they still rely on external capabilities — APIs, tools, integrations, SaaS platforms, or even humans — to complete tasks.

This made me wonder:

Does it make sense to have a marketplace for agent capabilities?

For example:

• automation modules (file processing, web actions, integrations)
• domain-specific capabilities (tax preparation, accounting workflows, legal research, financial analysis, compliance tasks)
• industry-specialized skills that require deep expertise or local knowledge (tax filing in specific countries, regulatory reporting, audit preparation)
• reusable components that other agents can plug into

In theory, this could work like an app store or plugin ecosystem — where developers publish reusable capabilities and agents can dynamically use them.

However, I’m also wondering whether this layer would actually emerge as a marketplace — or whether SaaS platforms themselves will evolve to directly serve agents.

For example:

• Will SaaS products simply expose agent-friendly APIs and absorb this role?
• Will agents primarily interact with SaaS, rather than independent capability marketplaces?
• Or will there be a separate ecosystem of modular capabilities outside traditional SaaS?

I’m unsure about a few things:

• Would developers actually publish their capabilities publicly?
• Would most teams prefer building internally instead?
• Would highly specialized skills (like tax or compliance) be shared, or remain proprietary?
• Would SaaS platforms dominate this layer instead of marketplaces?
• What would make such a marketplace truly useful rather than unnecessary?

Curious to hear from people building or working with agents:

How do you currently handle capability gaps in your agents?
Do you see value in a shared marketplace?
Or do you think SaaS platforms will become the primary capability layer for agents?

Would love to hear your thoughts.