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Agent Transfer Protocol AGTP

Coordinate 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 [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 [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 [2].

Overview

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 this verification pass.

As of 2026-09-05 the current revision on the IETF datatracker is -09, dated 2026-06-28, five revisions past the -04 draft this record was originally seeded from (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 [1][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.

Discovery and probe

none · none

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

Not probed live: not-http. AGTP is its own application-layer protocol over QUIC or TCP.

History

Instances

Every instance with its source is listed on the instances page.

See also

References

  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/ (2026-09-05) VERIFIED
  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 (2026-09-05) VERIFIED

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