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The motto is: ask the website to help you fulfill what you need without needing to go into click-that-and-there maze.
Some websites are pure utility (even their owners or managers might think otherwise). The main reason is to get info, get answers or fulfill what you want to (or are directed to) do.
Usually the same websites are huge. Think about your utility provider. Or phone company. Or state agency. Immense amount of information (and requirements), options and all hidden (in the better case) somewhere on the website.
Sure, some websites offer "AI assistant chats". This is a good move, but really expensive one, especially if you want to do it well. The main advantage they can have is that they may recognize you and then pull specific information about you into the chat. But it happens very rarely and has major privacy implications.
The downside is that this interaction is outside your usual space. Be it ChatGPT, Claude, or other. It has pros and cons, of course. But the advantage is that you will have your interactions with (different) website in one place that you use probably daily.
So what if the website publishes the resources it has (all the information, knowledge base etc.) and all the tools you can use on the website (like register, fill-in the required form, ask for help). This is the goal of MCP (Model Context Protocol), introduced by Anthropic (Claude) as an open standard last year.
It is early standard and it might change or inspire some better standard to emerge. But it is here, there are a lot of existing integrations. It is bumpy, sure. Even in Claude Desktop it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. But it is early technology and the general approach will stay.
AI assistants already changed the way we get information. What I consider interesting on it is that it changes - I'd say radically - some way how apps, UIs, websites and software is done. And no, I do not mean that it allows us to do in magnitude more effective way what we do today. I mean that it will change "what we do today". How the systems work. Just like the internet didn’t simply “help” traditional publishing—it changed it to the bone.
I'm experimenting with the way how to enable website to support MCP and how user can use just one plugin in eg. Claude Desktop to interact with many websites. The road is bumpy... what works one day, is broken the other one. But the learning and knowledge and mindset is too valuable to be overlooked.
For more information about this experiment see website proxy.If interested to use it, write me.
If you’re interested in the tech, doing something similar, or like the path I'm pursuing and want to be part of it, please, write me, too. I'd be happy to cooperate.
Some other thoughts...
I don't believe that the web as we know it will go extinct. No, not at all. I hope it will stay here for long time.
The need for imagery, expressive or subtle visual or audio compositions — and other artistic, deeply personal and authentic ways to express ideas — will hopefully still be present. Think about it as going to the theatre (to get the atmosphere, other people, unique experience — not just "seeing the play") or going to a rural marketplace (to chat with people, smell, smile, and maybe even buy something).
On the other hand, sometimes we need to get information without getting lost in website-specific design mazes.
We need both — help with what we want to accomplish without learning the peculiarities of specific web design, AND enjoying the peculiarities of other website-specific designs. Life is colorful, not uniform.