Agent Transfer Protocol (ATP)
draft-hood-independent-atp-00
| Document | Type |
Replaced Internet-Draft
(individual)
Expired & archived
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Chris Hood | ||
| Last updated | 2026-03-19 | ||
| Replaced by | draft-hood-independent-agtp | ||
| RFC stream | (None) | ||
| Intended RFC status | (None) | ||
| Formats | |||
| Stream | Stream state | (No stream defined) | |
| Consensus boilerplate | Unknown | ||
| RFC Editor Note | (None) | ||
| IESG | IESG state | Replaced by draft-hood-independent-agtp | |
| Telechat date | (None) | ||
| Responsible AD | (None) | ||
| Send notices to | (None) |
This Internet-Draft is no longer active. A copy of the expired Internet-Draft is available in these formats:
Abstract
AI agents and agentic systems generate a growing volume of intent- driven, unstructured, and undifferentiated traffic that flows through HTTP indistinguishably from human-initiated requests. HTTP lacks the semantic vocabulary, observability primitives, and identity mechanisms required by agent systems operating at scale. Existing protocols described as "agent protocols" — including MCP, ACP, A2A, and ANP — are messaging-layer constructs that presuppose HTTP as their transport. They do not address the underlying transport problem. This document defines the Agent Transfer Protocol (ATP): a dedicated application-layer protocol for AI agent traffic. ATP provides agent- native intent methods (QUERY, SUMMARIZE, BOOK, SCHEDULE, LEARN, DELEGATE, COLLABORATE, CONFIRM, ESCALATE, NOTIFY), protocol-level agent identity and authority headers, and a status code vocabulary designed for the conditions AI agent systems encounter. ATP SHOULD prefer QUIC for new implementations and MUST support TCP/TLS for compatibility and fallback. It is designed to be composable with existing agent frameworks, not to replace them.
Authors
(Note: The e-mail addresses provided for the authors of this Internet-Draft may no longer be valid.)