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DNS for AI Discovery DNS-AID

Discover DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID) standardizes publishing AI agents in the Domain Name System so other agents can discover them, using DNS Service Binding (SVCB) records for connectivity and key metadata, a well-known DNS-SD-style entry point (_index._agents.<domain>) into an organization's agent index, and optionally DNSSEC and DANE TLSA records for trust [1]. It is an IETF Internet-Draft in the dnsop working group's area (individual submission, not yet WG-adopted), authored by engineers at Infoblox, Deutsche Telekom and Amazon, current revision -02 dated 27 May 2026 with intended status Standards Track [1].

Overview

It solves the "given a domain, where is the agent and which protocol does it speak" problem entirely within DNS, so that once a client has resolved an organization's agents once, subsequent lookups are cacheable and require no extra round trip beyond ordinary DNS resolution [1]. The mechanism defines two record shapes: an SVCB record at an individual agent's owner name carrying TargetName, alpn, well-known (a well-known URI path per RFC 8615) and other SvcParamKeys, and an SVCB record at the fixed label _index._agents.<domain> pointing to an organization-wide index [1]. A TXT-record fallback and a DNSSEC/DANE-authenticated TLSA companion record are both discussed but explicitly not the primary mechanism [1]. The document introduces no new DNS resource record types, opcodes, or response codes -- it is a usage convention over existing SVCB/TXT/TLSA record types [1].

DNS-AID does not itself define authentication or authorization beyond DANE-based TLS endpoint verification, does not define the schema of the capability descriptor referenced by well-known (that is out of scope), and use case 3 (discovery by capability alone, with neither organization nor agent known) is explicitly out of scope for this document, though the authors note it "can be derived" from the spec [1].

Current state: as of 27 May 2026 this is a dnsop-area individual Internet-Draft, expiring 28 November 2026 unless refreshed [1]. Infoblox and GoDaddy issued a joint press release on 14 May 2026 announcing support for "open standards for AI agent discovery, identity and verification" that names this effort [2], but that is a vendor-support announcement, not evidence of production deployments; no independent implementation count was found. Two other agentic-web specifications explicitly build on it: ADP (draft-pro-adp) delegates its entire DNS discovery layer to DNS-AID rather than duplicating it [3], and ARD's informative discussion of federated query resolution names DNS-AID as a way to "discover authoritative registries for specific domains" [3].

What is disputed or unknown: whether DNS-AID's SVCB-based approach and the separately-authored AID specification's flat TXT-record approach (see aid) will converge, coexist, or one will win out -- no evidence of coordination between the two projects was found. Adoption is recorded as "claimed" (by the Infoblox/GoDaddy announcement) rather than measured, since no independent DNS probe of a domain sample was run for this record.

Discovery and probe

DNS SVCB records at the agent's owner name; DNS-SD-style well-known labels _agents/_index for an organization index; optional TXT fallback and DNSSEC/DANE TLSA for trust · _index._agents.<domain> (SVCB); _agent-name.<domain> (SVCB)

DNS SVCB query for _index._agents.{domain}, then SVCB query for the target agent owner name it returns
parse:     SVCB RRset present with alpn/well-known/cap SvcParamKeys; absence of TargetName error and presence of at least one SvcParamKey confirms an agent record
on absent: Domain publishes no DNS-AID SVCB records; DNS-AID cannot be used to bootstrap discovery for this domain

Not probed live: not-http. DNS SVCB records; the HTTP well-known form is covered by the aid rule.

History

Instances

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

See also

References

  1. draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid-02 (27 May 2026, IETF dnsop, authors from Infoblox, Deutsche Telekom, Amazon) defines SVCB records at an agent's owner name plus a well-known DNS-SD-style _index._agents.<domain> organization index, with optional TXT fallback and DANE TLSA for endpoint authentication. — https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-mozleywilliams-dnsop-dnsaid/ (2026-05-27) VERIFIED
  2. Infoblox and GoDaddy jointly announced support for open standards for AI agent discovery, identity and verification, naming this DNS-based approach. — https://aboutus.godaddy.net/newsroom/news-releases/press-release-details/2026/Infoblox-and-GoDaddy-Support-Open-Standards-for-AI-Agent-Discovery-Identity-and-Verification-2026-0acKMntvOC/default.aspx (2026-05-14) REPORTED
  3. ARD v0.91 itself names DNS-AID as a candidate mechanism for federated routing ("leveraging DNS-AID to discover authoritative registries for specific domains"), and ADP (draft-pro-adp) explicitly delegates its DNS layer to DNS-AID. — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ards-project/ard-spec/main/spec/ard.md (2026-08-26) VERIFIED

Disputed: Two IETF drafts now build on top of DNS-AID's SVCB mechanism (ADP explicitly, ARD's informative discussion) while a third, unrelated spec (AID, agentcommunity.org) independently chose the DNS TXT record at _agent.<domain> for the same job. The two are not compatible: DNS-AID uses SVCB records with a _agents/_index label structure; AID (agentcommunity) uses a flat TXT record. No evidence found that these projects coordinate.

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