{
 "acronym": "ARD",
 "adoption": {
  "by": "agenticresources.dev own probe, 2026-09-04",
  "level": "observed",
  "probe_run": {
   "origins_probed": 50,
   "origins_found": 6,
   "last": "2026-09-04"
  }
 },
 "aliases": [
  "AI Catalog",
  "ai-catalog.json (predecessor path)"
 ],
 "analog": "sitemap plus a search engine index",
 "collisions": [
  "ARDP (Agent Registration and Discovery Protocol, unrelated IETF draft)",
  "AIR (the urn:air: identifier namespace this spec defines is sometimes referred to standalone)"
 ],
 "discovery": {
  "mechanism": "well-known manifest, robots.txt Agentmap directive, HTML <link rel=\"ard\">, DNS SVCB, in-page JSON-LD",
  "path": "/.well-known/ard.json"
 },
 "dispute": {
  "claims": [
   "v0.91 text: /.well-known/ard.json is canonical; /.well-known/ai-catalog.json is an optional predecessor",
   "2026-09-04 probe: 100% of observed manifests are still at ai-catalog.json; only 19% also serve ard.json",
   "Identifier form is urn:air:<publisher>:<namespace>:<agent-name>, not urn:ard as some earlier notes assumed"
  ],
  "summary": "The path this specification calls canonical has changed between revisions and prior internal notes got this backwards: v0.91 (26 Aug 2026) makes /.well-known/ard.json canonical and demotes /.well-known/ai-catalog.json to an optional, non-required-to-consult predecessor path. Our own probe (2026-09-04, prior to this verification) found the entire observed deployment base still on the old ai-catalog.json path, with only 6 of 31 also serving the new path -- so real-world adoption lags the spec text by at least one full path rename. Adoption level is left as \"observed\" rather than \"measured\" here because no probe-run artifact exists inside this repository (data/) to cite by filename; the probe that produced the 31/50 figure lives in the sibling agenticresources.dev project."
 },
 "evidence": [
  {
   "claim": "ARD v0.91 (26 Aug 2026), authored by Google/Microsoft/Hugging Face individuals, defines the ARD entry as a JSON-LD node and moves the canonical manifest path to /.well-known/ard.json, explicitly naming /.well-known/ai-catalog.json as the deprecated predecessor path that consumers MAY but need not consult.",
   "date": "2026-08-26",
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md"
  },
  {
   "claim": "Google announced the Agentic Resource Discovery Specification and directed publishers to a well-known catalog mechanism.",
   "date": "2026-06-17",
   "label": "REPORTED",
   "url": "https://developers.googleblog.com/en/announcing-the-agentic-resource-discovery-specification/"
  },
  {
   "claim": "AGNTCY's Agent Directory Service (ADS) implements AI Catalog interoperability, serving /.well-known/ai-catalog.json and exporting records to a2a/mcp/oasf formats -- one real implementation of the ARD manifest side.",
   "date": "2026-07-06",
   "label": "VERIFIED",
   "url": "https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mp-agntcy-ads-02"
  },
  {
   "claim": "A probe of 50 domains run by this site's publisher (agenticresources) on 2026-09-04 found 31 serving a manifest, all 31 on the predecessor ai-catalog.json path, and only 6 of those also on the new ard.json path -- i.e. the ecosystem has not yet moved to the canonical path this v0.91 revision defines.",
   "date": "2026-09-04",
   "label": "REPORTED",
   "url": "https://agenticresources.dev/"
  }
 ],
 "form": "well-known-file",
 "governance": "Authored by individuals at Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face (Junjie Bu, R.V. Guha, Shaun Smith); published as an open GitHub project (ards-project/ard-spec) with no formal standards body yet; contributions acknowledged from AWS, Cisco, Databricks, GitHub, GoDaddy, Nvidia, Salesforce and Snowflake",
 "group": null,
 "history": [
  {
   "date": "2026-09-05",
   "note": "seeded from Exa Agent research run"
  },
  {
   "date": "2026-09-06",
   "note": "verified against ARD v0.91 spec text (raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md); corrected canonical path from ai-catalog.json to ard.json; folded ai-catalog-well-known-file into this record"
  }
 ],
 "id": "ard",
 "implementation": "shipping",
 "last_verified": "2026-09-06",
 "name": "Agentic Resource Discovery",
 "native_status": "Proposal",
 "origin": {
  "date": "2026-06-17",
  "org": "Google, Microsoft, Hugging Face"
 },
 "part_of": null,
 "parties": [
  "agent-site",
  "agent-registry"
 ],
 "phase": "draft",
 "probe": {
  "method": "GET",
  "on_absent": "Domain publishes no ARD manifest at the current canonical path; it may still publish at the deprecated predecessor path /.well-known/ai-catalog.json, which conformant consumers are not required to consult",
  "parse": "200 response is JSON with a top-level \"entries\" array of ARD entries (each with identifier/displayName/type/url-or-data); a consumer MAY also check the predecessor /.well-known/ai-catalog.json and an HTML <link rel=\"ard\"> tag",
  "path": "https://{origin}/.well-known/ard.json"
 },
 "question": "Where are an organization's discoverable agentic resources (MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, registries), and how can they be found by search rather than pre-installed one at a time?",
 "scope": "general",
 "spec_url": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md",
 "step": "discover",
 "summary_md": "Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) is a specification for how agentic resources -- MCP servers, A2A agents, skills, and other callable services -- are described, discovered, and searched across a federated network of registries [1]. It is authored by individuals at Google, Microsoft and Hugging Face and published as an open GitHub project (ards-project/ard-spec) rather than through a formal standards body; the current text is version v0.91, dated 26 August 2026, and is explicitly labelled a \"Proposal\" [1].\n\nARD solves the problem of scaling tool selection beyond an LLM's context window: instead of injecting every possible tool description into a prompt, a client searches a registry's index using natural language plus structured filters, and the registry returns ranked entries [1]. Each entry is a JSON-LD node with a small set of required terms (identifier, displayName, type, and either url or data), and publishers can extend it with arbitrary namespaced terms without waiting for a spec revision [1]. Entries are advertised through a well-known manifest, robots.txt Agentmap directives, an HTML `<link rel=\"ard\">` tag, DNS SVCB records, or in-page markup; the manifest path is `/.well-known/ard.json` [1].\n\nA significant correction to earlier internal notes: the v0.91 text makes `/.well-known/ard.json` the canonical path and explicitly demotes the older `/.well-known/ai-catalog.json` path (and the `ai-catalog` link relation) to an optional predecessor that a conformant consumer is not required to consult [1]. Prior assumptions that ai-catalog.json was still canonical as of this version are wrong as of the text fetched 2026-09-06.\n\nARD does not define a signing or authentication scheme of its own (it defers to whatever trust framework a publisher's `trustManifest` declares), does not constrain artifact-specific schemas (MCP, A2A, etc. remain external), and does not define a normative way to fetch a full entry by identifier from a search result [1].\n\nImplementation exists: AGNTCY's Agent Directory Service explicitly serves `/.well-known/ai-catalog.json` and can export records into a2a, mcp, oasf and agent-skill formats, functioning as one real ARD-manifest-compatible implementation [3]. Beyond that, adoption is thin and lagging the spec's own migration: a probe of 50 domains run by this site's publisher (agenticresources) on 2026-09-04 found 31 serving some manifest, all 31 still on the deprecated ai-catalog.json path, and only 6 of those also serving the new ard.json path [4] -- meaning the observed deployment base predates this very revision's path rename. Because that probe artifact is not present in this repository, adoption here is recorded as \"observed\" rather than \"measured\".\n\nWhat is disputed or unknown: whether the ecosystem migrates to ard.json before a competing discovery mechanism (DNS-AID, AID, ADP) becomes the practical default; whether any registry beyond ADS has implemented the POST /search and POST /explore REST surface this spec mandates; and how the optional `trustManifest` verification step will be operationalized across publishers who have never coordinated on a trust framework.\n\nThe record `ai-catalog-well-known-file`, which previously modelled the manifest file as a separate entity, has been folded into this record: it described the same well-known artifact that this specification now supersedes with `ard.json`, and keeping it separate obscured that the two are one lineage, not two competing formats.",
 "track": "vendor-consortium",
 "version": {
  "date": "2026-08-26",
  "label": "v0.91"
 },
 "url": "https://agenticweb.wiki/protocols/ard/",
 "category": "discover",
 "type": "protocol"
}