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Agent Network Protocol ANP

Coordinate The Agent Network Protocol (ANP) is a suite of open specifications describing itself as aiming to become "the HTTP of the Agentic Web era": a protocol stack for agent identity, naming, discovery, negotiation, secure messaging, and application-level collaboration [1]. It solves several coordinate-layer problems at once rather than one narrow one: did:wba (ANP-03) gives agents a Web-based DID identity method; ANP-04 layers human-readable WNS handles (e.g. alice.example.com) over DIDs; ANP-07 defines machine-readable Agent Description documents; ANP-08 (the Agent Discovery Protocol, ADSP) defines active discovery via a well-known JSON-LD collection page and a passive registration API for search-service agents; ANP-09 defines an end-to-end encrypted instant-messaging profile suite (direct and group messaging, attachments, federation, mentions); and ANP-10 layers an agent payment protocol (AP2) on top [1][2].

Overview

ANP explicitly does not rebuild core internet infrastructure — it reuses HTTP, DNS, CA/TLS, CDN, and search rather than defining a new network stack — and its meta-protocol layer (ANP-06, a semantic negotiation layer analogous in spirit to Agora's protocol negotiation) remains an unreleased draft, not part of the currently released architecture [1].

As of this verification (2026-09-05), the released specification-document version is 1.1, though the project is explicit that this document-version bump does not change the wire-level protocolVersion field, which remains "1.0.0" in released message examples — a versioning nuance worth flagging for implementers [1]. Discovery is confirmed executable: GET https://{domain}/.well-known/agent-descriptions should return a JSON-LD CollectionPage whose items[] array lists ad:AgentDescription entries with pagination via a next field, per RFC 8615 conventions [2]. The project also publishes vNext draft revisions (ANP-01 through ANP-09) that do not yet replace the released v1.1 text, and a separately versioned ANP Messaging 1.2 draft for multi-device cryptographic endpoints. What is unresolved: no independently measured count of live ANP deployments was found in this pass — adoption here is recorded as unmeasured, and the seed's prior "v0.1, experimental" characterization understated the protocol's actual maturity (v1.1, released), which was corrected in this pass.

Discovery and probe

Agent Discovery Service Protocol (ADSP), active .well-known discovery · /.well-known/agent-descriptions

GET {origin}/.well-known/agent-descriptions
parse:     JSON-LD CollectionPage document with an items[] array of ad:AgentDescription entries confirms ANP active discovery is exposed
on absent: 404 or non-JSON-LD response means the domain does not expose ANP active discovery; agents there may still be reachable only via passive registration with a search service

Live check run by the MCP probe: GET /.well-known/agent-descriptions. ANP active discovery is a JSON-LD collection of AgentDescription items.

{
 "path": "/.well-known/agent-descriptions",
 "expect": {
  "content_type": "json",
  "text_match": "AgentDescription"
 },
 "note": "ANP active discovery is a JSON-LD collection of AgentDescription items."
}

History

Instances

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

See also

References

  1. ANP's released specification suite (v1.1) covers did:wba identity, WNS handles, agent description (ANP-07), agent discovery (ANP-08), end-to-end instant messaging (ANP-09), and the AP2 agent payment protocol (ANP-10); the meta-protocol (ANP-06) remains an unreleased draft. — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/main/README.md (2026-09-05) VERIFIED
  2. ANP-08 (Agent Discovery Protocol, Released v1.1) defines active discovery via the well-known path https://{domain}/.well-known/agent-descriptions, returning a JSON-LD CollectionPage listing agent description documents, plus a passive registration API for search-service agents. — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/main/08-ANP-Agent-Discovery-Protocol-Specification.md (2026-09-05) VERIFIED

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