Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) vs Official MCP Registry
They sit at the same step and overlap in purpose; the fields above are the basis for choosing.
| Agentic Resource Discovery ARD | Official MCP Registry MCP Registry | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 1 Discover: What is here, and where? | 1 Discover: What is here, and where? |
| Answers | Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time? | Where can an agent or client find a catalogue of public MCP servers, and how do sub-registries mirror it? |
| Governed by | Authored by individuals at Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face (Junjie Bu, R.V. Guha, Shaun Smith); published as an open GitHub project (ards-project/ard-spec) with no formal standards body yet; contributions acknowledged from AWS, Cisco, Databricks, GitHub, GoDaddy, Nvidia, Salesforce and Snowflake | MCP Registry Working Group |
| Status (issuer's words) | Proposal | Preview; API frozen at v0.1; "Registry API v1 GA: Ideating, no target date" |
| Version | v0.91 (2026-08-26) | API v0.1 (frozen, preview) |
| Form / transport | well-known file | endpoint |
| Found at | /.well-known/ard.json | GET /v0.1/servers |
| Implementation | multi-implementation — agenticweb.wiki /check/ probe (13/268 origins on /.well-known/ard.json; 43/268 on predecessor /.well-known/ai-catalog.json) | shipping |
| Evidence | 2 verified, 2 reported | 3 verified |
| Primary use case | Let agents discover my API or service | Let agents discover my API or service |
| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |
| Specification | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md | https://modelcontextprotocol.io/community/working-groups/registry |
When to use which
- Choose Agentic Resource Discovery when your question is “Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time?” and you accept its maturity: status "Proposal", implementation multi-implementation (agenticweb.wiki /check/ probe (13/268 origins on /.well-known/ard.json; 43/268 on predecessor /.well-known/ai-catalog.json)).
- Choose Official MCP Registry when your question is “Where can an agent or client find a catalogue of public MCP servers, and how do sub-registries mirror it?” and you accept its maturity: status "Preview; API frozen at v0.1; "Registry API v1 GA: Ideating, no target date"", implementation shipping.
Read the full articles
- Agentic Resource Discovery: Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time?
- Official MCP Registry: Where can an agent or client find a catalogue of public MCP servers, and how do sub-registries mirror it?