# Agent Transfer Protocol AGTP

[6 · Coordinate](/category/coordinate/)

| Agent Transfer Protocol |
| --- |
| Category | [Coordinate](/category/coordinate/) |
| Governed by | IETF individual/independent submission; not adopted by an IETF working group |
| Status | Internet-Draft (work in progress), independent submission |
| Phase | draft |
| Implementation | none found |
| Adoption | unmeasured |
| Version | draft-hood-independent-agtp-09 (2026-06-28) |
| Specification | [https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-09.html](https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-09.html) |
| Found at | none |
| Last checked | 2026-09-06 |

[Coordinate](/category/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]](#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 [[2]](#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 [[2]](#ref-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]](#ref-1)[[2]](#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.

## 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
- 2026-09-05 — seeded from Exa Agent research run
- 2026-09-06 — verified against IETF datatracker and draft-hood-independent-agtp-09 (updated spec_url from -04 to current -09, dated 2026-06-28); no implementations found

## Instances

- [Elemen (AGTP browser)](https://chrishood.com/introducing-elemen-the-worlds-first-browser-for-the-agent-web/) · Observed 2026-06-05 · agent
- [AGTP module for Drupal](https://www.drupal.org/project/agtp) · Observed 2026-05-16 · service
- [AGTP reference implementation (nomoticai/agtp)](https://github.com/nomoticai/agtp) · Observed 2026-04-20 · registry

Every instance with its source is listed on the [instances page](/instances/).

## See also

## References

- 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/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hood-independent-agtp/) (2026-09-05) VERIFIED
- 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](https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-hood-independent-agtp-04.html) (2026-09-05) VERIFIED

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