Name: Agent Communication Protocols (agentproto)

Description

An AI agent is an autonomous, adaptive intelligent software system that uses AI models to complete a specific task. AI Agents often interact with users via chat or voice, performing tasks based on the flow of the conversation. To complete tasks on behalf of a human user or another AI agent, they can independently make decisions, execute actions, and interact with other AI agents and tools.

With the expansion of communication over the Internet between AI Agents and external resources that can be tools or other AI Agents, reliable communications across platforms and vendors becomes increasingly important. The role of the this effort is to facilitate such interoperability so that tools and agents can be provided by multiple vendors. The Agent Communication Protocols effort will work on defining frameworks and protocol building blocks for enabling interoperability for AI Agent applications across the Internet.

Required Details

• Status: WG forming
• Responsible AD: Charles Eckel
• BOF proponents:

Cullen Jennings <fluffy@iii.ca>
Jonathan Rosenberg <jdrosen@jdrosen.net>
Suresh Krishnan <suresh.krishnan@gmail.com>
Dapeng Liu <max.ldp@alibaba-inc.com>
Zaheduzzaman Sarker <zaheduzzaman.sarker@nokia.com>
Lionel Morand <lionel.morand@huawei.com>
Kehan Yao <yaokehan@chinamobile.com>
Arashmid Akhavain <arashmid.akhavain@huawei.com>
Hesham Moussa <hesham.moussa@huawei.com>

• Number of people expected to attend: 150
• Length of session (1 or usually 2 hours): 2 hours
• Conflicts (whole Areas and/or WGs)
• Chair Conflicts: aipref, iabopen, oauth
• Technology Overlap: dawn(BoF), oauth, moq, quic, webtrans, wimse
• Key Participant Conflict: TBD

Information for IAB/IESG

To allow evaluation of your proposal, please include the following items:

• Any protocols or practices that already exist in this space:

Yes. There are several protocols and frameworks that exist in this space. Some of the key protocols and frameworks include the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, and the AGNTCY framework

• Which (if any) modifications to existing protocols or practices are required:

Yes. Here are some of the modifications that are anticipated:

1. This effort is expected to work on a protocol for creation and maintenance of long-lived sessions between AI agents, or between AI agents and tools. These sessions allow for the bidirectional exchange of data, including model context, tool call results, and chat messages. It is anticipated that this protocol will utilize modern IETF application transfer protocols, such as QUIC, webtransport, WebRTC or MOQ, based on the anticipated use cases.

2. This effort is expected to work on an agent-specific integration framework that will enable an AI Agent to create an independent identity, obtain and exchange access tokens with fine-grained, behavior-driven scopes bound to the specific operations that it is permitted to perform on behalf of the user. It is anticipated that this might require changes/extensions to oauth and wimse. These changes and extensions required are expected to be worked on in their respective working groups and not inside this effort.

• Which (if any) entirely new protocols or practices are required:

This effort is expected to work on a protocol for creation and maintenance of long-lived sessions between AI agents, or between AI agents and tools. These sessions allow for the bidirectional exchange of data, including model context, tool call results, and chat messages. It is anticipated that this protocol will utilize modern IETF application transfer protocols, such as QUIC, webtransport, WebRTC or MOQ, based on the anticipated use cases.

• Open source projects (if any) implementing this work:

Agenda

• Items, Internet-Drafts, speakers, timing
• Or a URL

Links to the mailing list, draft charter if any (for WG-forming BoF), relevant Internet-Drafts, etc.

• Mailing List: https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/agent2agent
• Draft charter: https://github.com/jdrosen/aiproto-wg/blob/main/Charter_Merge.md
• Relevant Internet-Drafts:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-rosenberg-aiproto-framework/
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-jennings-ai-mcp-over-moq/
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-klrc-aiagent-auth/
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-liu-agent-operation-authorization/
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-liu-agent-protocol-over-moq/