Terminology for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities (DAWN)
draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-02
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| Document | Type | Active Internet-Draft (individual) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Authors | Adrian Farrel , Kehan Yao , Roland Schott , Nic Williams | ||
| Last updated | 2026-06-04 | ||
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draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-02
Network Working Group A. Farrel
Internet-Draft Old Dog Consulting
Intended status: Informational K. Yao
Expires: 6 December 2026 China Mobile
R. Schott
Deutsche Telekom
N. Williams
Infoblox
4 June 2026
Terminology for the Discovery of Agents, Workloads, and Named Entities
(DAWN)
draft-farrel-dawn-terminology-02
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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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 6 December 2026.
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Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2026 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Operational Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
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).
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, if it 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 |
| | Disovery Scope |
| Capability | |
| | Function |
| | Attributes |
| | Properties |
| | Capability Card |
| | Trust Indicator |
| Registration | |
| | Capability Exposure |
| | Registrar |
| | Discoverable Object Validation |
| Selection | |
| | Capability Exchange |
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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.,
that an entity possess or may have access to such as capabilities,
skill type, communication language, capacity, task description,
contact information, ID, etc. (See also, properties.)
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
discovery processes, or an achieved through and interaction with
an entity. (See also, Capability Exchange.)
Capability Exchange: The processes by which entities exchange
details 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 selection and
operation of agents.
Discoverable Object: An information object that is discoverable and
includes information that defines what an entity is, what
attributes it possess, how to reach to 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 the discovery substrate.
Discovered Entity: An entity whose properties are returned as the
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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.
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 desireable.
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.
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Properties: The discoverable characteristics of an entity.
Properties include, but are not limited to, communication
protocols, capability cards, location, trust indicators, and
operational status.
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.
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, and Chenguang Du, and Daniel King 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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