How does KYA-OS (Know Your Agent Operating System) compare to other identify protocols?

KYA-OS (Know Your Agent Operating System) is one of 23 standards at step 2, Identify (Who is this agent? Who is this site?). It pairs with Model Context Protocol, x401: HTTP Proof Requirement Protocol, KYAPay Token. It builds on Model Context Protocol. Every standard at this step is listed at https://agenticweb.wiki/category/identify/.

KYA-OS (Know Your Agent Operating System) KYA-OS

2 · Identify

KYA-OS (Know Your Agent Operating System)
Category	Identify
Governed by	Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), KYA-OS Task Force in the Trusted AI Agents Working Group (TAAWG); donated by Vouched; spec editors Dylan Hobbs and the KYA-OS Working Group
Status	SPEC.md declares 'Version: 1.0.0, Status: Stable' and says it was ratified as a DIF standard; DIF's own posts describe a task force under community development
Phase	stable
Implementation	shipping
Adoption	unmeasured
Version	1.0.0 (Stable, self-declared)
Specification	https://github.com/decentralized-identity/kya-os-mcp/blob/main/SPEC.md
Found at	/.well-known/mcp
Acronym collisions	KYA (the generic Know-Your-Agent term in the glossary), KYAPay (Skyfire's token profile, tracked as kyapay-token, unrelated)
Last checked	2026-10-20
Freshness	current · checked 2026-10-20
Solves	Prove an agent's identity, Delegate a user's authority to an agent, Audit what an agent did

KYA-OS (Know Your Agent Operating System) is an agentic-web standard (document format) at step 2, Identify, governed by Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), KYA-OS Task Force in the Trusted AI Agents Working Group (TAAWG); its own status is "SPEC.md declares 'Version: 1.0.0, Status: Stable' and says it was ratified as a DIF standard; DIF's own posts describe a task force under community development" (stable). It answers: How can an MCP server tell which agent is calling, on whose authority it acts, and keep signed proof of what it did? Adoption is unmeasured, last verified 2026-10-20.

Identify KYA-OS, formerly MCP-I, is an identity and delegation layer for MCP and other agent protocols ^[1]^[2]. Each agent has a DID. A chain of W3C Verifiable Credentials links it back to the person or company that authorised it. The server can then check who is calling and on whose authority ^[1]. Each tool response carries an Ed25519 signed proof in the MCP _meta field, giving both sides a record of what was done. Revocation uses StatusList2021 ^[1].

Overview

Servers SHOULD publish a JSON document at /.well-known/mcp naming their DID and which KYA-OS features they support ^[1]. Note that this is a different path from the /.well-known/mcp.json some MCP server cards use.

Vouched built it as MCP-I and donated it to the Decentralized Identity Foundation, which renamed it ^[2]. DIF runs it as a task force inside its Trusted AI Agents Working Group and says the scope now reaches well beyond MCP ^[3]. The spec calls itself Stable 1.0.0 and says DIF ratified it; DIF's own posts do not say so (see dispute). The repository's v1.20.0 tag versions the code package, not the spec.

Discovery and probe

well-known JSON document on the MCP server naming its DID, capabilities and endpoints (SPEC.md §10, SHOULD) · /.well-known/mcp

GET /.well-known/mcp
parse:     JSON with 'serverDid', 'version' and a 'capabilities' object (proofs, delegation, statusList); validate against schemas/well-known-mcpi.json
on absent: The server does not advertise KYA-OS; the endpoint is a SHOULD, so a KYA-OS server may still attach proofs in MCP _meta without it.

Live check run by the MCP probe: GET /.well-known/mcp. KYA-OS SPEC.md section 10: servers SHOULD expose /.well-known/mcp with serverDid and capabilities.

{
 "path": "/.well-known/mcp",
 "expect": {
  "json_keys": [
   "serverDid"
  ]
 },
 "note": "KYA-OS SPEC.md section 10: servers SHOULD expose /.well-known/mcp with serverDid and capabilities."
}

History

2026-10-20 — added from gap scout 2026-10-20; verified against SPEC.md in decentralized-identity/kya-os-mcp (status line, §10 well-known endpoint) and DIF's posts of 2026-03-05 and 2026-04-22

Instances

No instances recorded yet.

References

SPEC.md, 'KYA-OS Protocol Specification', declares Version 1.0.0, Status Stable; it defines agent DIDs (did:key, did:web), W3C Verifiable Credential delegation chains rooted at a Responsible Party, Ed25519 signed per-response proofs attached in MCP _meta, StatusList2021 revocation, and a /.well-known/mcp endpoint servers SHOULD expose. — https://github.com/decentralized-identity/kya-os-mcp/blob/main/SPEC.md VERIFIED
DIF's post 'Why We Brought KYA-OS (formerly MCP-I) to DIF' confirms the rename from MCP-I and the donation by Vouched. — https://blog.identity.foundation/why-dif-said-yes-to-mcp-i/ (2026-03-05) VERIFIED
DIF announces a KYA-OS Task Force inside the Trusted AI Agents Working Group, with a scope extending well beyond MCP. — https://blog.identity.foundation/kya-os/ (2026-04-22) VERIFIED
Vouched announces, with DIF, the launch of KYA-OS as an open trust layer for AI agents. — https://www.vouched.id/learn/vouched-and-the-decentralized-identity-foundation-launch-kya-os-an-open-trust-layer-for-ai-agents (2026-07-29) REPORTED

Disputed: The spec's own status line says Stable 1.0.0 and claims ratification as a DIF standard, but DIF's posts describe a task force still developing it, and no DIF ratification notice was found.

JSON · Markdown