Discovery of Agents With Names (DAWN)

Deployment of some AI systems requires interactions between a client (including but not limited to an AI agent) and other AI resources. For some of these interactions to work, the client may need to discover some specific AI resources and learn how to contact them.

The focus of this working group is on how a client can discover AI resource specific properties before invoking it, i.e., the minimum discovery information: e.g., type, reachability information, communication protocol, services.

Note that discovery may be an iterative process, and may utilize either direct transfer or indirection.

To support these goals, the working group will specify an interoperable and generic discovery mechanism that builds on existing protocols and tools, benefits from established trust models, supports proven delegation and federation architectures, and allows organizations to have independently published discovery information.

Scope

Discovery in the DAWN context is limited to a client requesting, "Find me an agent resource to interact with," within a local network, within an organization, or between organizations. This may include communication about the following example attributes:

• What is the agent resource's type and classification?
• What communication and security protocols does the discovered agent support?
• What are the minimum requirements for information exchange?

Where possible, any solutions created by this WG will be built in a modular way using existing IETF protocols that provide support for any needed communication, authentication, and privacy. The WG will consider mDNS and DNS as potential mechanisms upon which to build a discovery protocol, but may examine other solutions as well.

The WG work items will consider having confidentiality and integrity of all the information exchanged between the DAWN parties.

Although initially focused on discovery of AI agents and their capabilities, the WG should strive to produce results that are general and reusable within other discovery contexts if possible.

Out of Scope

Specifically out of scope for the DAWN WG during its initial phase are:

• Exchange of capability information beyond the minimum discovery information.
• All communication beyond the initial discovery process.
• AI resource indexing across the wider Internet.
• Stable identifiers of AI agents, tools and skills.
• Interoperable information schemas beyond discovering a transfer protocol.
• Trust management and trust evaluation methods beyond secure content exchanged between DAWN parties.

Future DAWN or other WG charters may take on these tasks.

Deliverables

The DAWN working group will work on the following deliverables:

• Terminology: The definition of common DAWN terminology for use in the other DAWN documents. (May be published as an Informational RFC or included in the Architecture document.)

• Discovery Architecture: One or more documents describing the problem space, including deployment models (within a local network, within an organization, or between organisation), requirements, and the resulting DAWN architecture. (May be published as Informational RFC(s), but maybe held until the Protocol work is considered stable.)

• Use Cases and Applicability: A document describing broad DAWN use case categories. (May be published as an Informational RFC)

• Protocol: One or more specifications describing the implementations of the Discovery Architecture(s) (To be published as Standards Track document(s)).

Coordination with Other Working Groups and Organizations

The DAWN working group will seek to coordinate with other WGs relating to DNS, discovery, identities, or AI. It will also coordinate with external standards bodies as necessary.

Milestones

to be published outside of the actual charter.

April 2027
Optional submission of the DAWN Terminology document to the IESG for publication.

June 2027
Optional submission of the DAWN Use Cases document to the IESG for publication.

December 2027
Submission of the DAWN Protocol specification to the IESG for publication.

January 2028
Optional submission of the DAWN Architecture document to the IESG for publication.