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Agent Client Protocol

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This page is about the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), the open protocol that Zed created so that third-party coding agents can work inside code editors, announced on 2025-08-27 [1]. It is not the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), the open checkout protocol that OpenAI and Stripe announced on 2025-09-29 with Instant Checkout in ChatGPT [37][38] (see Agentic Commerce Protocol). It is not the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) that IBM Research launched for its BeeAI Platform in March 2025 and that merged with the Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) under the Linux Foundation, announced on 2025-08-29 [39] (see Agent Communication Protocol and Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)). It is not AGNTCY's Agent Connect Protocol (ACP) for invoking remote agents over an API [40] (see Agent Connect Protocol). For the protocol that connects AI applications to external tools and data, see Model Context Protocol.

Overview

The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) is an open protocol that lets any compatible coding agent work inside any compatible code editor, much as the Language Server Protocol did for language tools [1][7]. Zed Industries created it with Google, with Gemini CLI as its initial reference implementation, and has developed it jointly with JetBrains since October 2025 under the Apache 2.0 licence [1][2][4]. The editor usually starts the agent as a subprocess and exchanges JSON-RPC messages with it over stdio: it opens a session and sends prompts, and the agent streams back progress, tool calls and diffs, asking the editor for permission before acting [8][9]. Version 1 is stable, a v2 draft has been published, and a shared registry lets editors install agents directly [13][16][20].

Who uses it

Agents that implement ACP, each checked on 2026-10-28 in its own repository or documentation. The Claude and Codex entries are adapters published in the ACP GitHub organisation that wrap each vendor's own SDK or CLI. These five are examples, not a complete list; the ACP Registry lists more [19].

Who reads it

Recent coverage

See also

References

  1. Nathan Sobo, Zed Industries, Bring Your Own Agent to Zed — Featuring Gemini CLI (Zed blog), 2025-08-27: "Nathan Sobo August 27th, 2025" "To make this possible, we created the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), and we've partnered with Google to integrate Gemini CLI as the initial reference implementation." "So we defined a minimal set of JSON-RPC endpoints to relay user requests to the agent and render its responses. The result is the Agent Client Protocol, a lean framework that lets any client talk to any agent, as long as they follow the schema." "Update: As of Wednesday, September 3, we've added beta support for Claude Code in Zed" — https://zed.dev/blog/bring-your-own-agent-to-zed
  2. Franciska Dethlefsen, Zed Industries, ACP Brings JetBrains on Board (Zed blog), 2025-10-06: "Franciska Dethlefsen October 6th, 2025" "JetBrains has announced it will co-develop the Agent Client Protocol with us." "When we launched ACP a few months ago with Google and Gemini CLI, our goal was simple: create an open standard so any agent could work with any editor." — https://zed.dev/blog/jetbrains-on-acp
  3. Denis Shiryaev, JetBrains, JetBrains × Zed: Open Interoperability for AI Coding Agents in Your IDE (The JetBrains Blog), 2025-10-06 (date from the page's time element): "Today, we're excited to share that we're collaborating with Zed on the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) – an open protocol that lets AI coding agents work inside editors, including JetBrains IDEs, if both are ACP-compatible." — https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2025/10/jetbrains-zed-open-interoperability-for-ai-coding-agents-in-your-ide/
  4. Agent Client Protocol, Governance (agentclientprotocol.com), checked 2026-10-28: "The following is an interim governance model to provide clearer roles and responsibilities between the various parties collaborating on ACP." "ACP is jointly governed by Zed and JetBrains, who collaborate to ensure the protocol serves the broader ecosystem. We aim to operate transparently and make decisions in the best interests of ACP and its community, while working toward transitioning to an independent foundation." "ACP has two lead maintainers: Ben Brandt (Zed Industries) and Sergey Ignatov (JetBrains)." "All repositories in the ACP organization should be licensed under the Apache 2.0 License." "This project does not require a Contributor License Agreement (CLA)." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/community/governance
  5. Ben Brandt, Sergey Ignatov joins ACP as Lead Maintainer (agentclientprotocol.com announcement), 2026-02-18: "Published: February 18, 2026 It is with great pleasure that I announce that Sergey Ignatov, from JetBrains, will be joining me as a Lead Maintainer for ACP." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/announcements/sergey-ignatov-lead-maintainer
  6. Agent Client Protocol, Requests for Dialog (RFDs), checked 2026-10-28: "The project currently has a design team with the Zed team as the lead (BDFL)." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/rfds/about
  7. Agent Client Protocol, Introduction, checked 2026-10-28: "The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) standardizes communication between code editors/IDEs and coding agents and is suitable for both local and remote scenarios." "Local agents run as sub-processes of the code editor, communicating via JSON-RPC over stdio." "Full support for remote agents is a work in progress." "The protocol re-uses the JSON representations used in MCP where possible, but includes custom types for useful agentic coding UX elements, like displaying diffs." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/get-started/introduction
  8. Agent Client Protocol, Protocol Overview, checked 2026-10-28: "The protocol follows the JSON-RPC 2.0 specification with two types of messages" "Client → Agent: initialize to establish connection" "Client → Agent: session/prompt to send user message" "Agent → Client: session/update notifications for progress updates and user-facing notices" "session/request_permission Request user authorization for tool calls." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/protocol/v1/overview
  9. Agent Client Protocol, Transports, checked 2026-10-28: "Agents and clients SHOULD support stdio whenever possible." "The client launches the agent as a subprocess." "Streamable HTTP In discussion, draft proposal in progress." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/protocol/v1/transports
  10. Agent Client Protocol, Content, checked 2026-10-28: "ACP's ContentBlock is compatible with, and a superset of, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) 2025-06-18 ContentBlock, so Agents can forward content from MCP tool outputs unchanged." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/protocol/v1/content
  11. Agent Client Protocol, Session Setup, checked 2026-10-28: "When creating a session, Clients MAY include connection details for MCP servers that the Agent should connect to." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/protocol/v1/session-setup
  12. Agent Client Protocol, MCP-over-ACP: Stateless MCP Requests over ACP (draft RFD), checked 2026-10-28: "Let an ACP client or proxy supply tools to an agent using the ACP connection it already has." "This draft targets MCP 2026-07-28 only." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/rfds/mcp-over-acp
  13. Agent Client Protocol, ACP v2 is available in Draft (announcement), 2026-07-20: "Published: July 20, 2026 Today is a day the ACP team has been working towards for months, and we are excited to share the first Draft of version 2 of the Agent Client Protocol." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/announcements/acp-v2-draft
  14. Agent Client Protocol, Transports Working Group (announcement), 2026-04-22: "Published: April 22, 2026 I'm excited to announce that we have a new Transports working group! Remote Agent support is a key focus of ACP, and in order to make this more of a reality, we need to standardize all of the approaches to transports people have been trying. We have started work on a Draft RFD for how this could work both via WebSockets and HTTP." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/announcements/transports-working-group
  15. Agent Client Protocol, Updates, checked 2026-10-28: "June 25, 2026 SDKs Rust and TypeScript SDKs Reach 1.0" — https://agentclientprotocol.com/updates
  16. agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol, Agent Client Protocol (ACP) README.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) standardizes communication between code editors (interactive programs for viewing and editing source code) and coding agents (programs that use generative AI to autonomously modify code)." "The current stable ACP protocol version is 1." "ACP wire compatibility is determined separately by the protocol version exchanged during initialize via protocolVersion." — https://github.com/agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol
  17. GitHub API record for agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol, checked 2026-10-28: ""full_name": "agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol"" ""created_at": "2025-06-23T17:39:36Z"" ""spdx_id": "Apache-2.0"" — https://api.github.com/repos/agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol
  18. GitHub API, releases of agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol (timestamps in UTC), checked 2026-10-28: ""tag_name": "v1.13.0", "target_commitish": "main", "name": "Rust Crate v1.13.0", "draft": false, "immutable": false, "prerelease": false, "created_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:48Z", "updated_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:49Z", "published_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:49Z"" ""tag_name": "schema-v1.27.0", "target_commitish": "main", "name": "Schema v1.27.0", "draft": false, "immutable": false, "prerelease": false, "created_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:50Z", "updated_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:58Z", "published_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:51Z"" ""tag_name": "schema-v2.0.0-alpha.10", "target_commitish": "main", "name": "Schema v2.0.0-alpha.10", "draft": false, "immutable": false, "prerelease": true, "created_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:51Z", "updated_at": "2026-10-27T21:57:01Z", "published_at": "2026-10-27T21:56:53Z"" ""tag_name": "v1.0.0", "target_commitish": "main", "name": "Rust Crate v1.0.0", "draft": false, "immutable": false, "prerelease": false, "created_at": "2026-06-24T12:13:52Z", "updated_at": "2026-06-24T12:13:53Z", "published_at": "2026-06-24T12:13:53Z"" — https://api.github.com/repos/agentclientprotocol/agent-client-protocol/releases?per_page=100
  19. Agent Client Protocol, ACP Registry, checked 2026-10-28: "The ACP Registry is an easy way for developers to distribute their ACP-compatible agents to any client that speaks the protocol. This is a curated set of agents, including only the ones that support authentication." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/get-started/registry
  20. Agent Client Protocol, ACP Registry is stabilized (announcement), 2026-03-09: "Published: March 9, 2026 The ACP Registry RFD has moved to Completed and the initial version of the registry is stabilized." — https://agentclientprotocol.com/announcements/acp-agent-registry-stabilized
  21. agentclientprotocol/registry, ACP Registry README.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "Registry of agents implementing the Agent Client Protocol, ACP." "https://cdn.agentclientprotocol.com/registry/v1/latest/registry.json" — https://github.com/agentclientprotocol/registry
  22. Ben Brandt, Zed Industries, The ACP Registry is Live (Zed blog), 2026-01-28: "Ben Brandt January 28th, 2026" "We're thrilled to announce that developers can now register their agent implementation once, and it will become available to every ACP-compatible client." "Zed and JetBrains IDEs now have built-in registry support so users can easily install and always have the latest version of their favorite agents available in their editor." — https://zed.dev/blog/acp-registry
  23. Jan-Niklas Wortmann, JetBrains, ACP Agent Registry Is Live: Find and Connect AI Coding Agents in Your JetBrains IDE (The JetBrains Blog), 2026-01-28 (date from the page's time element): "Together with Zed (Zed's announcement), we've launched the official ACP Agent Registry: a directory of AI coding agents, integrated directly into JetBrains IDEs and Zed." "The ACP Registry is available now in JetBrains IDE versions 2025.3 and later." — https://blog.jetbrains.com/ai/2026/01/acp-agent-registry/
  24. Google, Gemini CLI documentation, ACP Mode, checked 2026-10-28: "ACP (Agent Client Protocol) mode is a special operational mode of Gemini CLI designed for programmatic control, primarily for IDE and other developer tool integrations. It uses a JSON-RPC protocol over stdio to communicate between Gemini CLI agent and a client." "Gemini CLI is an ACP-compatible agent and can be found in this registry." — https://geminicli.com/docs/cli/acp-mode/
  25. agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp, claude-agent-acp README.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "This tool implements an ACP agent by using the official Claude Agent SDK" — https://github.com/agentclientprotocol/claude-agent-acp
  26. agentclientprotocol/codex-acp, codex-acp README.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "codex-acp is a stdio ACP agent server. It starts the Codex App Server, translates ACP requests into Codex operations, and maps Codex events back into the client." — https://github.com/agentclientprotocol/codex-acp
  27. GitHub Docs, Copilot CLI ACP server, checked 2026-10-28: "ACP support in GitHub Copilot CLI is in public preview and subject to change." "Use the --acp option of the copilot command to start the CLI's ACP server." — https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-cli-reference/acp-server
  28. GitHub, ACP support in Copilot CLI is now in public preview (GitHub Changelog), 2026-01-28: "Improvement January 28, 2026" "GitHub Copilot CLI now implements the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an industry-standard protocol for communication between AI agents and clients. This enables third-party tools, IDEs, and automation systems to integrate directly with Copilot's agentic capabilities through an extensible interface." — https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-28-acp-support-in-copilot-cli-is-now-in-public-preview/
  29. goose documentation, Use goose as an ACP agent, checked 2026-10-28: "Use the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) to build clients that connect to goose's agent runtime, tools, extensions, and configured models." "goose Desktop is an ACP client that uses WebSocket." — https://goose-docs.ai/docs/gdk/acp/
  30. Zed documentation, External Agents, checked 2026-10-28: "External Agents are agents that integrate with Zed through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP)." — https://zed.dev/docs/ai/external-agents
  31. olimorris/codecompanion.nvim, CHANGELOG.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "17.18.0 (2025-08-27) Features chat: add support for Agent Client Protocol" — https://github.com/olimorris/codecompanion.nvim/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
  32. CodeCompanion.nvim documentation, Agent Client Protocol (ACP), checked 2026-10-28: "CodeCompanion implements it so you can work with agents like Claude Code and Codex from the chat buffer." — https://codecompanion.olimorris.dev/agent-client-protocol
  33. Álvaro Ramírez, Introducing Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP) (xenodium.com), 2025-09-25: "September 25, 2025 Introducing Emacs agent-shell (powered by ACP)" "Today, I have an initial version of agent-shell I can share. agent-shell is a native Emacs shell, powered by comint-mode" — https://xenodium.com/introducing-agent-shell
  34. Maika Möbus, Integrate AI Agents into the Editor: JetBrains and Zed Release ACP Registry (heise online), 2026-01-30: "Jan 30, 2026 at 8:10 pm CET 2 min. read Developer By Maika Möbus" "IDE provider JetBrains and the company behind the Zed source code editor, Zed Industries, have jointly released the ACP Registry." — https://www.heise.de/en/news/Integrate-AI-Agents-into-the-Editor-JetBrains-and-Zed-Release-ACP-Registry-11160709.html
  35. Tim Anderson, Zed team releases version 1.0 of Rust-built editor (The Register), 2026-04-30: "Tim Anderson Published thu 30 Apr 2026" "Next up was AI agents, with the team working with Google and JetBrains on the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an attempt to standardize how agents communicate with editors." — https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/04/30/zed-team-releases-version-10-of-rust-built-editor/5225716
  36. Janakiram MSV, Free agents: How AWS Kiro could untie agents from editors (The New Stack), 2026-08-06: "Aug 6th, 2026 1:50pm by Janakiram MSV" "The engineering simplification is noteworthy, but the architectural decision is more consequential: AWS chose the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) as the interface between Kiro's clients and Kiro's own agent." "ACP originated at Zed and is now jointly developed with JetBrains" — https://thenewstack.io/kiro-agent-client-protocol/
  37. OpenAI, Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol (OpenAI blog), 2025-09-29 (the live page returned HTTP 403 to scripted fetches, so the quotes were checked against the Wayback Machine snapshot of 2026-10-22, the URL given here): "September 29, 2025 Product Buy it in ChatGPT: Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol" — https://web.archive.org/web/20261022061422/https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/
  38. agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol, Agentic Commerce Protocol README.md (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "The specification is maintained by OpenAI and Stripe and is currently in beta." — https://github.com/agentic-commerce-protocol/agentic-commerce-protocol
  39. Kate Blair and Todd Segal, ACP Joins Forces with A2A (LF AI & Data community blog), 2025-08-29: "ACP Joins Forces with A2A By Nora Anwar August 29, 2025" "IBM Research launched the Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) in March 2025 to power its BeeAI Platform" "Today, we're excited to share that ACP is officially merging with the A2A under the Linux Foundation (@thelinuxfoundation) umbrella." — https://lfaidata.foundation/communityblog/2025/08/29/acp-joins-forces-with-a2a-under-the-linux-foundations-lf-ai-data/
  40. AGNTCY, agntcy/acp-spec (Agent Connect Protocol Specification) README (text checked at the raw.githubusercontent.com copy), checked 2026-10-28: "The Agent Connect Protocol defines a standard interface to invoke and configure remote agents over an API." — https://github.com/agntcy/acp-spec

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