Terminology for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN)
draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-04

Network Working Group                                          A. Farrel
Internet-Draft                                        Old Dog Consulting
Intended status: Informational                                    K. Yao
Expires: 27 January 2027                                    China Mobile
                                                               R. Schott
                                                        Deutsche Telekom
                                                             N. Williams
                                                                Infoblox
                                                            26 July 2026

 Terminology for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities
                                 (DAWN)
                    draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-04

Abstract

   The proliferation of distributed systems, Artificial Intelligence
   (AI) agents, cloud workloads, and network services has created a need
   for interoperable mechanisms to discover entities.  Entities may
   include AI agents, software services, compute workloads, and other
   named resources that need to be found and characterised before
   interaction can begin.

   This document defines terminology for Discovery of Agents, Workloads,
   and Named Entities (DAWN).  The intention is that this common set of
   terms can be used by other documents related to DAWN and so achieve
   consistency of meaning across the space.

Status of This Memo

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 27 January 2027.

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Copyright Notice

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Discovery Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   4.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   5.  Privacy Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
   6.  Operational Considerations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   Authors' Addresses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8

1.  Introduction

   Distributed systems increasingly rely on the dynamic composition of
   services, agents, and workloads that may not have pre-configured
   connectivity relationships.  For example, an AI agent may need to
   find another agent with specific capabilities, a workload
   orchestrator may need to locate compute resources in a particular
   jurisdiction, or a service consumer may need to discover providers
   that support a required protocol or a data schema version.  Further
   use cases and scenarios may be considered, but it is out of scope to
   enumerate them.

   In each case, an entity needs knowledge of remote entities before
   interaction can proceed: what they are, what they offer, and whether
   they can be trusted.  Such knowledge could be obtained through static
   configuration, but this approach is impractical at scale and across
   organisational boundaries.  Automated discovery mechanisms are
   therefore needed.

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   Today, where automated discovery exists, it is typically handled
   through proprietary directories or platform-specific mechanisms.
   These approaches do not scale across organisational boundaries and
   create fragmented ecosystems where entities cannot find entities
   managed by other organisations.

   An interoperable discovery mechanism is needed that builds on
   existing protocols and tools, benefits from an established trust
   model, supports proven delegation and federation architectures, and
   allows organisations to independently publish discovery information.

   This document defines common terminology for use in documents that
   discuss Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN).

1.1.  Discovery Scope

   It will be helpful to understand the broader discovery ecosystem.
   Information must be registered to the discovery system, may be
   managed and updated, can then be discovered by other entities.  But
   the discoverable information must be balanced as a compromise between
   too much detail which will overload the discovery process, and too
   little information which would make discovery suboptimal.

   Additional detailed information may be exchanged between entities and
   this part of the process may also include negotiation of
   capabilities.

   In the end, this means that the "discovery ecosystem" can be broken
   down into at least the following functions:

   *  Registration and management of an entity to be discovered.

   *  Search based on a formalised encoding of search criteria.

   *  Discovery lookup based on a minimum viable data set (protocol,
      identifying properties) with return of a minimum set of
      discoverable information (including reachability).

   *  Reading of additional information.

   *  Capability exchange and negotiation.

   From an implementation perspective, some of these functional
   components might be included within the same module, and it is
   possible that some elements might be achieved using the same
   protocols.  However, for the sake of this document and the DAWN work,
   only the discovery lookup is in scope.

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2.  Terminology

   The terms presented in this section are in alphabetic order for ease
   of reference.  For those wishing to read this document to gain an
   understanding of the DAWN scenery, it is recommended to read the
   terms in the order presented in Figure 1.

            | Core term    | Subsidiary term                  |
            |--------------|----------------------------------|
            | Entity       |                                  |
            |              | Named Entity                     |
            |              | Agent                            |
            |              | Workload                         |
            |              | Task                             |
            |              | Discovering Entity               |
            |              | Discovered Entity                |
            | Discovery    |                                  |
            |              | Discovery Information            |
            |              | Discoverable Object              |
            |              | Minimum Discoverable Information |
            |              | Discovery Mechanism              |
            |              | Discovery Scope                  |
            | Capability   |                                  |
            |              | Function                         |
            |              | Attributes                       |
            |              | Properties                       |
            |              | Capability Card                  |
            |              | Trust Indicator                  |
            | Registration |                                  |
            |              | Capability Exposure              |
            |              | Registrar                        |
            |              | Discoverable Object Validation   |
            | Selection    |                                  |
            |              | Capability Exchange              |

                Figure 1: Key DAWN Terms in a Readable Order

   Agent:  A software entity that acts autonomously or semi-autonomously
      on behalf of a user, organisation, or system.  An agent may
      initiate interactions with other entities, make decisions, and
      perform tasks.

      AI agents are a specific class of agent that employ artificial
      intelligence techniques.

   Attributes:  The properties, features, capabilities, skills, etc.,

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      that an entity possesses or may have access to, such as skill
      type, communication language, capacity, task description, contact
      information, ID, etc.  The attributes of an entity form a full
      detailed set of information about the entity not all of which is
      necessarily available to be discovered or communicated to other
      entities.  (See also, properties and capability.)

   Capability:  A description of the functions, services, or actions
      that an entity can perform.  Capabilities may be described using
      structured schemas such as capability cards.

   Capability Card:  A structured, machine-readable description of an
      entity's capabilities and interface.  Variants include agent
      cards, task cards, resource cards, tool cards, and skill cards
      depending on the type of entity.

   Capability Exposure:  The processes by which entities expose their
      capabilities.  Such exposure may be part of the registration or
      management of discovery information prior to the discovery
      processes, or achieved through an interaction with an entity.
      (See also, Capability Exchange.)

   Capability Exchange:  The processes by which entities exchange
      details between each other of what they can do, dynamic status
      information, and which particular features or functions they wish
      to engage.

      Capability exposure, exchange, and negotiation are out of scope
      for DAWN, but will form an essential part of the entity ecosystem
      enabling the selection and operation of entities.

   Discoverable Object:  An information object that is discoverable and
      includes information that defines what an entity is, what
      attributes it possesses, how to reach the associated entity, etc.
      May be represented as a capability card.

   Discoverable Object Validation:  The process that verifies a
      discoverable object, ensures its compliance to referenced
      standards, and makes it available to be discovered.

   Discovered Entity:  An entity whose properties are returned as the
      result of a discovery process.  A discovered entity may be a
      specific instance or a member of a class of entities that can
      perform a desired function.

   Discovering Entity:  An entity (or its operator) that initiates the
      discovery process in order to find other entities to interact
      with.

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   Discovery:  The process by which an entity or its operator locates
      other entities that are capable of performing a desired function
      or providing a desired service, and obtains sufficient information
      to initiate interaction.

   Discovery Information:  The information returned by a discovery
      mechanism that allows the discovering entity to decide whether
      later interaction is possible and desirable.  This should be
      considered in terms of the Minimum Discoverable Information (q.v.)
      and compared with the broader set of information that forms part
      of the Capability Exchange (q.v.).

   Discovery Mechanism:  A protocol, system, or method used to perform
      discovery.  Examples include Domain Name System (DNS) based
      service discovery, directory services, and distributed registries.

   Discovery Scope:  The explicit domain over which discovery is
      performed.  Discovery scope may be specified in one or more
      dimensions, including but not limited to administrative
      identifiers (e.g., DNS domain names, AS numbers), trust domains,
      topological or distance metrics, geographic or jurisdictional
      boundaries, and temporal constraints.  Discovery scope bounds the
      search space and supports scalability, relevance, and policy
      enforcement.

   Entity:  A system component that communicates with other entities in
      a peer-to-peer or client-server relationship.  Entities include,
      but are not limited to, AI agents, tools, skills, tasks, compute
      workloads, software services, task owners, network functions, and
      application endpoints.

   Function:  The functional processing capability that an entity
      offers.  Examples include task execution, data transformation,
      inference, routing, steering, storage, and orchestration.

   Minimum Discoverable Information (MDI):  The minimum amount of
      information an entity needs to provide to become discoverable.
      Think of it as common header of a data structure.

   Named Entity:  An entity that is identified by a stable name within a
      naming system.  The naming system may be hierarchical (e.g., DNS)
      or flat.

   Properties:  The discoverable characteristics of an entity.
      Properties include, but are not limited to, communication
      protocols, capability cards, location, trust indicators, and
      operational status.  (Compare with attributes.)

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   Registrar:  An entity or system responsible for accepting and
      maintaining records about entities that wish to be discoverable.

   Registration:  The steps by which agents can register their existence
      with a registrar.  This should include attestation and other
      security mechanisms.

      Registration is out of scope for DAWN, but the information that
      can be discovered and the trust with which that information is
      treated are key to any complete system.

   Selection:  The mechanisms and policies by which an entity determines
      which discovered entities it will interact with.

      Selection is out of scope for DAWN, but depends on information
      obtained through discovery.

   Task:  A legacy term kept for continuity with earlier work.  A task
      may be considered as software service.

   Trust Indicator:  Information associated with an entity that allows a
      discovering party to assess the trustworthiness or provenance of
      the entity and its advertised properties.  Examples include
      digital signatures, certificates, and attestations.

   Workload:  A unit of compute or processing that is deployed and
      executed within a hosting environment.  Workloads may be transient
      or long-lived and may move between hosting environments.

3.  IANA Considerations

   This document does not make any requests of IANA.

4.  Security Considerations

   This document only defines a set of terms.  It does not introduce any
   issues that require security consideration.

   However, this document does define Trust Indicator, attestation-
   dependent Registration, and scope-based policy enforcement, and so it
   should be clear that discovery has significant security and privacy
   implications.  It is anticipated that these will be addressed in the
   DAWN solution/architecture documents

5.  Privacy Considerations

   This document only defines a set of terms.  It does not introduce any
   issues that require privacy consideration.

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6.  Operational Considerations

   This document only defines a set of terms.  It does not introduce any
   issues that require operational consideration.

7.  Acknowledgements

   The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of participants in
   the DAWN discussions that shaped this document.

   Jim Mozley, Med Boucadair, Chenguang Du, Daniel King, and Benoit
   Claise provided useful reviews of this document.

Authors' Addresses

   Adrian Farrel
   Old Dog Consulting
   United Kingdom
   Email: adrian@olddog.co.uk

   Kehan Yao
   China Mobile
   China
   Email: yaokehan@chinamobile.com

   Roland Schott
   Deutsche Telekom
   Germany
   Email: Roland.Schott@telekom.de

   Nic Williams
   Infoblox
   United States of America
   Email: nwilliams@infoblox.com

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