Module 7 · Capstone
Interview Prep: Headless 360
8 Questions You'll Actually Get Asked
8 Questions You'll Actually Get Asked
This topic is barely a few months old — most interviewers testing it will be as new to it as candidates. That makes precision your edge: sharp, correct answers here separate you fast from anyone who's only skimmed a headline.
Q1. What is Salesforce Headless 360?
✅ Direct Answer
A platform initiative, announced at TDX 2026, that exposes every Salesforce capability as an API, MCP tool, or CLI command — so agents like Claude can act on an org without anyone opening a browser.
🔑 Why?
Because agents don't click through UIs — they call APIs and tools directly. Headless 360 rebuilds the platform for that reality instead of forcing agents through a human-designed interface.
🏢 Real World Example
At XYZ Company, a support rep used to open a case record, click through three tabs, and manually update a status. With Headless 360, that same update happens from a Slack message, with Claude calling the update directly through an MCP tool.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Announced April 15, 2026 at TDX; core package shipped that month
- It's an expansion of the platform, not a replacement for Lightning
- Built on four pillars: MCP/APIs, Agent Skills, Metadata, HXL
One-Line Answer
"Headless 360 exposes every Salesforce capability as an API, MCP tool, or CLI command, so agents can act on an org directly, without a browser in the loop."
Q2. Is HXL the same thing as AXL?
✅ Direct Answer: YES
Yes — Headless Experience Layer (HXL) and Agentforce Experience Layer (AXL) refer to the same technology. Salesforce's own material uses both names, and the industry hasn't settled on one yet.
🔑 Why?
Naming evolved fast after the TDX announcement as the product matured through subsequent release cycles — this kind of drift is common right after a major platform announcement.
📊 Table
| HXL | Headless Experience Layer — used in developer-facing docs |
| AXL | Agentforce Experience Layer — used in product/marketing material |
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Don't get tripped up if an interviewer uses one name and you know the other
- Both separate what an agent does from how it renders
One-Line Answer
"HXL and AXL are the same technology under two names — Salesforce hasn't fully settled the terminology yet."
Q3. What are MCP tools in the context of Salesforce?
✅ Direct Answer
Callable tools, exposed through the Model Context Protocol, that let AI agents access Salesforce data, workflows, and business logic — either pre-built by Salesforce (Standard Hosted) or configured by a developer (Custom Hosted).
🔑 Why?
MCP is an open standard, so any MCP-compatible client — Claude, Cursor, Codex — can discover and call these tools without a custom, one-off integration for each one.
🏢 Real World Example
At XYZ Company, a developer exposes an existing "Cancel Order" Flow as a custom MCP tool. Support reps in Slack can now trigger that same Flow through Claude, without a new integration being built.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- 60+ MCP tools ship standard, covering SObject CRUD, Data 360, Marketing Cloud, Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft
- Custom tools can expose Invocable Apex, Flows, or Apex REST endpoints
One-Line Answer
"MCP tools expose Salesforce data and logic to AI agents through an open standard, either as pre-built Standard Hosted servers or Custom Hosted servers built on your own Apex or Flows."
Q4. Does Headless 360 replace Lightning Experience?
❌ Direct Answer: NO
No. Lightning components and browser-based experiences aren't going away. Headless 360 adds a way to access the platform without a browser — it doesn't remove the browser option.
🔑 Why?
Many users and workflows still need or prefer a full UI. Headless 360 is about making the browser optional for agents and automated workflows, not mandatory removal for humans.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Parker Harris's framing was "why should you ever log in again," not "you can't log in anymore"
- Frame this as an expansion of surfaces, not a deprecation of Lightning
One-Line Answer
"No — Headless 360 makes the browser optional for agentic access, it doesn't remove Lightning as an option for human users."
Q5. What does HXL actually control vs. what stays the agent's job?
✅ Direct Answer
HXL controls only presentation — how a component renders on a given surface. It does not decide what the agent does, what data it can see, or what actions it's allowed to take.
⚙️ What HXL Actually Controls
- ✅ Translating one component definition into Slack Block Kit, Teams Adaptive Cards, etc.
- ✅ Adapting layout to what each surface can visually support
- ❌ Does NOT enforce security or permissions — that's schema-level (validation rules, sharing, Apex)
- ❌ Does NOT decide business logic — that lives in the underlying Flow, Apex, or agent reasoning
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- This is a common trap question — candidates who say "HXL handles security" get this wrong
- Security must move fully to the schema level once the UI stops being the primary surface
One-Line Answer
"HXL only controls how an interaction renders per surface — security, permissions, and business logic all stay outside of it, enforced at the schema level."
Q6. Can an AI agent access data through MCP that a human user couldn't see?
❌ Direct Answer: NO
No. Every MCP tool call enforces the exact same Field-Level Security, sharing rules, and CRUD permissions as the calling user would have in Lightning. There's no separate, looser trust layer for agents.
🔑 Why?
This is Salesforce's "Trust Moat" principle — the surface an interaction happens on changes, but the underlying enforcement doesn't. Without this guarantee, agentic access would be a major security regression.
🏢 Real World Example
At XYZ Company, a support rep without access to Opportunity Amount asks Claude via Slack to summarize a deal. Claude's response omits the amount, because the connection inherits that rep's exact permission set.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Permissions are enforced per-user, per-call — not once at connection setup
- If a field was only hidden by page layout rather than FLS, HXL will expose that gap — this is worth mentioning as a nuance
One-Line Answer
"No — every MCP call inherits the exact same Field-Level Security, sharing rules, and CRUD permissions the calling user already has."
Q7. What authentication does Salesforce Hosted MCP require?
✅ Direct Answer
OAuth 2.0 with PKCE, through an External Client App — not a traditional Connected App, which isn't supported for this specific authentication path.
🔑 Why?
This is a commonly missed detail — a lot of early tutorials (including earlier drafts of this very course) default to describing Connected Apps out of habit, since that's the familiar OAuth pattern for most Salesforce integrations.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Required scopes:
mcp_apiandrefresh_token - Went GA on April 29, 2026
- Requires an interactive OAuth flow per user — no static credential shortcut for headless/background agents
One-Line Answer
"Salesforce Hosted MCP requires OAuth 2.0 with PKCE through an External Client App, using the mcp_api and refresh_token scopes — Connected Apps aren't supported here."
Q8. Do MCP tool calls count against the org's normal API limits?
✅ Direct Answer: YES
Yes. Every MCP tool call counts exactly like a REST API call, against the org's standard daily limit — 100,000 by default on Enterprise Edition, measured on a rolling 24-hour window.
🔑 Why?
MCP is a new access pattern, not a new quota. Salesforce didn't carve out separate headroom for agentic traffic, so a single conversation with 8-15 tool calls consumes real capacity, fast, especially at scale.
📌 Key Points for Interviewer
- Good answer to pair with a real number: 40 users × a few tool-heavy conversations a day adds up faster than people expect
- Monitor via Setup → System Overview → API Requests, Last 24 Hours
One-Line Answer
"Yes — every MCP tool call counts against the same rolling 24-hour API limit as any REST call, and agentic workflows tend to consume it faster because of how many tool calls a single conversation can involve."
🎯
Keep Testing Yourself in Practice Zone
27 MCQ quizzes, 2,244 questions, covering Apex, LWC, Agentforce, and more. A dedicated Headless 360 quiz testing these exact 8 questions and beyond is coming soon.
Go to Practice Zone
🏆 Course Complete
Seven modules, one of the first structured, hands-on, interview-ready guides to Salesforce Headless 360 anywhere online. Bookmark and share — this stays updated as Salesforce ships changes through 2026.
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By SF Interview Pro
Salesforce Interview Prep Team
Practical Q&A by working Salesforce professionals · LWC, Apex, Data Cloud & AI
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