{ "acronym": "DNS-AID", "adoption": { "by": "Infoblox and GoDaddy joint press release", "level": "claimed", "probe_run": null }, "aliases": [], "analog": "DNS-based Service Discovery (DNS-SD) for agents", "collisions": [ "AID (Agent Identity and Discovery, a separate, unrelated agentcommunity.org spec that also does DNS-first discovery)" ], "discovery": { "mechanism": "DNS SVCB records at the agent's owner name; DNS-SD-style well-known labels _agents/_index for an organization index; optional TXT fallback and DNSSEC/DANE TLSA for trust", "path": "_index._agents. (SVCB); _agent-name. (SVCB)" }, "dispute": { "claims": [ "DNS-AID: SVCB-based, IETF dnsop, multi-vendor (Infoblox/Deutsche Telekom/Amazon/GoDaddy)", "AID: TXT-based, agentcommunity.org, unrelated authorship" ], "summary": "Two IETF drafts now build on top of DNS-AID's SVCB mechanism (ADP explicitly, ARD's informative discussion) while a third, unrelated spec (AID, agentcommunity.org) independently chose the DNS TXT record at _agent. for the same job. The two are not compatible: DNS-AID uses SVCB records with a _agents/_index label structure; AID (agentcommunity) uses a flat TXT record. No evidence found that these projects coordinate." }, "evidence": [ { "claim": "draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02 (27 May 2026, IETF dnsop, authors from Infoblox, Deutsche Telekom, Amazon) defines SVCB records at an agent's owner name plus a well-known DNS-SD-style _index._agents. organization index, with optional TXT fallback and DANE TLSA for endpoint authentication.", "date": "2026-05-27", "label": "VERIFIED", "url": "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid/" }, { "claim": "Infoblox and GoDaddy jointly announced support for open standards for AI agent discovery, identity and verification, naming this DNS-based approach.", "date": "2026-05-14", "label": "REPORTED", "url": "https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/news-releases/press-release-details/2026/Infoblox-and-GoDaddy-Support-Open-Standards-for-AI-Agent-Discovery-Identity-and-Verification-2026-0acKMntvOC/default.aspx" }, { "claim": "ARD v0.91 itself names DNS-AID as a candidate mechanism for federated routing (\"leveraging DNS-AID to discover authoritative registries for specific domains\"), and ADP (draft-pro-adp) explicitly delegates its DNS layer to DNS-AID.", "date": "2026-08-26", "label": "VERIFIED", "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md" } ], "form": "dns-record", "governance": "IETF dnsop working group Internet-Draft (individual submission track, not yet WG-adopted)", "group": null, "history": [ { "date": "2026-09-05", "note": "seeded from Exa Agent research run" }, { "date": "2026-09-06", "note": "verified against draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02 spec text via datatracker.ietf.org" } ], "id": "dns-aid", "implementation": "unknown", "last_verified": "2026-09-06", "name": "DNS for AI Discovery", "native_status": "Internet-Draft, Standards Track intended status", "origin": { "date": "2026-05-27", "org": "Infoblox, with Deutsche Telekom and Amazon co-authors" }, "part_of": null, "parties": [ "agent-site", "agent-agent" ], "phase": "draft", "probe": { "method": "DNS", "on_absent": "Domain publishes no DNS-AID SVCB records; DNS-AID cannot be used to bootstrap discovery for this domain", "parse": "SVCB RRset present with alpn/well-known/cap SvcParamKeys; absence of TargetName error and presence of at least one SvcParamKey confirms an agent record", "path": "SVCB query for _index._agents.{domain}, then SVCB query for the target agent owner name it returns" }, "question": "Given a domain, where is its agent endpoint, what protocol does it speak, and how can that be verified via DNSSEC/DANE?", "scope": "general", "spec_url": "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid/", "step": "discover", "summary_md": "DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID) standardizes publishing AI agents in the Domain Name System so other agents can discover them, using DNS Service Binding (SVCB) records for connectivity and key metadata, a well-known DNS-SD-style entry point (`_index._agents.`) into an organization's agent index, and optionally DNSSEC and DANE TLSA records for trust [1]. It is an IETF Internet-Draft in the dnsop working group's area (individual submission, not yet WG-adopted), authored by engineers at Infoblox, Deutsche Telekom and Amazon, current revision -02 dated 27 May 2026 with intended status Standards Track [1].\n\nIt solves the \"given a domain, where is the agent and which protocol does it speak\" problem entirely within DNS, so that once a client has resolved an organization's agents once, subsequent lookups are cacheable and require no extra round trip beyond ordinary DNS resolution [1]. The mechanism defines two record shapes: an SVCB record at an individual agent's owner name carrying `TargetName`, `alpn`, `well-known` (a well-known URI path per RFC 8615) and other SvcParamKeys, and an SVCB record at the fixed label `_index._agents.` pointing to an organization-wide index [1]. A TXT-record fallback and a DNSSEC/DANE-authenticated TLSA companion record are both discussed but explicitly not the primary mechanism [1]. The document introduces no new DNS resource record types, opcodes, or response codes -- it is a usage convention over existing SVCB/TXT/TLSA record types [1].\n\nDNS-AID does not itself define authentication or authorization beyond DANE-based TLS endpoint verification, does not define the schema of the capability descriptor referenced by `well-known` (that is out of scope), and use case 3 (discovery by capability alone, with neither organization nor agent known) is explicitly out of scope for this document, though the authors note it \"can be derived\" from the spec [1].\n\nCurrent state: as of 27 May 2026 this is a dnsop-area individual Internet-Draft, expiring 28 November 2026 unless refreshed [1]. Infoblox and GoDaddy issued a joint press release on 14 May 2026 announcing support for \"open standards for AI agent discovery, identity and verification\" that names this effort [2], but that is a vendor-support announcement, not evidence of production deployments; no independent implementation count was found. Two other agentic-web specifications explicitly build on it: ADP (draft-pro-adp) delegates its entire DNS discovery layer to DNS-AID rather than duplicating it [3], and ARD's informative discussion of federated query resolution names DNS-AID as a way to \"discover authoritative registries for specific domains\" [3].\n\nWhat is disputed or unknown: whether DNS-AID's SVCB-based approach and the separately-authored AID specification's flat TXT-record approach (see `aid`) will converge, coexist, or one will win out -- no evidence of coordination between the two projects was found. Adoption is recorded as \"claimed\" (by the Infoblox/GoDaddy announcement) rather than measured, since no independent DNS probe of a domain sample was run for this record.", "track": "ietf", "version": { "date": "2026-05-27", "label": "draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02" } }