---
type: Agentic Web Standard
title: "Agent Transfer Protocol"
description: "How can AI agent traffic be identified, authenticated, and governed as a distinct application-layer protocol rather than blending into ordinary HTTP?"
resource: "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-09.html"
tags: ["coordinate", "endpoint", "ietf", "agent-to-agent-messaging", "prove-agent-identity", "describe-agent-capabilities"]
status: draft
generated: { by: agenticweb-builder/1.0, at: 2026-10-30T00:00:00Z }
verified: { by: process:agenticweb-engine, at: 2026-10-29T00:00:00Z }
stale_after: 2026-11-28T00:00:00Z
sources:
  - id: ref-1
    resource: "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hood-independent-agtp/"
    title: "draft-hood-independent-agtp is at revision 09 (dated 2026-06-28 per the IETF datatracker document history), authored by Chris Hood of Nomotic, Inc., filed as an independent submission (not a working-group draft)."
    last_modified: 2026-09-05T00:00:00Z
  - id: ref-2
    resource: "https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-04.html"
    title: "The draft defines AGTP as a dedicated application-layer protocol for AI agent traffic, distinct from and layered beneath HTTP-based agent protocols it calls Agent Group Messaging Protocols (AGMP) including MCP, ACP, A2A, and ANP; it prefers QUIC and requires TCP/TLS fallback."
    last_modified: 2026-09-05T00:00:00Z
---

# Agent Transfer Protocol

Agent Transfer Protocol (AGTP) is an agentic-web standard (endpoint) at step 6, Coordinate, governed by IETF individual/independent submission; its status is "Internet-Draft, independent submission". It answers: "How can AI agent traffic be identified, authenticated, and governed as a distinct application-layer protocol rather than blending into ordinary HTTP?" Implementation status is none found, last verified 2026-10-29.

# Overview

The Agent Transfer Protocol (AGTP) is an Internet-Draft proposing a dedicated, non-HTTP, application-layer transport protocol purpose-built for AI agent traffic, submitted independently to the IETF (not sponsored by a working group) by Chris Hood of Nomotic, Inc [^ref-1]. It aims to solve a problem the author frames as: HTTP-based "Agent Group Messaging Protocols" (the draft's own term, naming MCP, ACP, A2A, and ANP as examples) presuppose HTTP as transport and so lack semantic vocabulary, observability primitives, and agent-identity mechanisms at the transport layer [^ref-2]. AGTP proposes its own intent-oriented methods (QUERY, SUMMARIZE, BOOK, SCHEDULE, LEARN, DELEGATE, COLLABORATE, CONFIRM, ESCALATE, NOTIFY, DESCRIBE, SUSPEND), protocol-level agent identity/authority headers, a purpose-built status-code vocabulary, and prefers QUIC with mandatory TCP/TLS fallback [^ref-2].

AGTP does not define a discovery mechanism comparable to a well-known URI, and — because it proposes an entirely new wire protocol rather than a convention layered on existing HTTP infrastructure — it has no probe that can be executed with a simple `curl` against an arbitrary origin; there is no evidence of any implementation, reference or otherwise.

As of 2026-09-05 the current revision on the IETF datatracker is -09, dated 2026-06-28, succeeding earlier revisions including -04 (2026-04-17); the abstract that draft-09 preserves has iterated substantially, layering in normative integration hooks for a "Merchant Identity and Agentic Commerce Binding specification," new merchant-related headers, and new authority-scope domains, evidence that the draft is under active, fast-moving individual authorship [^ref-1][^ref-2]. It remains an independent submission: it has not been adopted by any IETF working group, has no known implementations, and its status track here is recorded as IETF only in the loose sense of venue — it is not on a working-group standards track. What is unresolved: whether any organization beyond the sole named author (Nomotic, Inc.) is contributing to or planning to implement AGTP; no evidence of external implementers or adopters was found.

# Examples

```http
none none — AGTP is a non-HTTP application-layer protocol (QUIC preferred, TCP/TLS fallback) with its own method vocabulary (QUERY, SUMMARIZE, BOOK, SCHEDULE, LEARN, DELEGATE, COLLABORATE, CONFIRM, ESCALATE, NOTIFY, DESCRIBE, SUSPEND); it defines no well-known HTTP path or endpoint that a curl-style probe could hit
# parse: not applicable: there is no HTTP response body or header to parse because AGTP does not run over HTTP
# on absent: not applicable — no implementation of AGTP has been located anywhere, so there is nothing to probe for absence against; see summary_md
```

# Knowledge Graph

* **Lifecycle Step**: [6 Coordinate](/category/coordinate/index.md)
* **Pairs with**: [Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)](/okf/protocols/a2a.md), [Model Context Protocol](/okf/protocols/mcp.md), [Agent Network Protocol](/okf/protocols/anp.md), [Agent Communication Protocol](/okf/protocols/agent-communication-protocol.md), [Agentic Commerce Protocol](/okf/protocols/agentic-commerce-protocol.md)

[^ref-1]: draft-hood-independent-agtp is at revision 09 (dated 2026-06-28 per the IETF datatracker document history), authored by Chris Hood of Nomotic, Inc., filed as an independent submission (not a working-group draft). (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hood-independent-agtp/)
[^ref-2]: The draft defines AGTP as a dedicated application-layer protocol for AI agent traffic, distinct from and layered beneath HTTP-based agent protocols it calls Agent Group Messaging Protocols (AGMP) including MCP, ACP, A2A, and ANP; it prefers QUIC and requires TCP/TLS fallback. (https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-04.html)