What an AAIF award says about building in the open

On October 23, 2026, the Agentic AI Foundation gave Vstorm its Open Agentic AI Innovation Award. I accepted it on stage in San Jose, and I want to explain why this recognition matters to me as a founder.

When Vstorm joined the foundation in December 2025, we were the first agentic AI engineering and services company to do so. Some people asked why a boutique company would spend engineering time on open standards instead of client work. My answer was that, for us, the two are the same work.

The award recognized something unglamorous: an AGENTS.md file in every project we ship, and MCP support in AgenticOS. That file tells a coding agent how to build a project, which conventions to follow and what not to touch. Once our open-source template generated it automatically, every project started from that template benefited, ours and the community’s.

The lesson I take from this is simple. A services company earns trust by putting its methods in the open, where anyone can check them. Our clients can see what they will own before they sign.

Thank you to the Vstorm engineering team, to Bartosz Gonczarek for presenting with me in San Jose, and to the AAIF selection committee.

The full story of how we got here: open agentic AI standards at Vstorm