Agent Network Protocol (ANP)

ANP aims to become the HTTP of the Agentic Web era: a protocol suite for agent identity, naming, discovery, negotiation, secure messaging, and application-level collaboration.

Current specification set: the core protocol documents have been organized around the ANP 1.1 release line. The released suite covers did:wba identity, WNS handles, agent description, agent discovery, end-to-end instant messaging, and the AP2 agent payment protocol. The meta-protocol specification remains a draft and is not released yet.

ANP Core vNext draft: the core protocol vNext index holds candidate revisions for ANP-01 through ANP-09. It currently starts from ANP-03 and ANP-04 copied from the released v1.1 text. These drafts do not replace the released specifications until they are published.

ANP Messaging 1.2 draft: the mixed-version draft suite defines multi-device cryptographic endpoints under one DID while keeping P1/P2/P3/P4/P7/P8 and the P9 Mention binding on v1. Only the incompatible Direct E2EE and Group E2EE Profiles use v2. Draft presence does not imply implementation support or public capability advertisement.

Versioning note: Version: 1.1 identifies the specification/document release version. It does not change the ANP payload field protocolVersion; examples and protocol fields that use "protocolVersion": "1.0.0" remain unchanged because this release does not change protocol fields, flows, or security requirements.

Note: This project has not issued any digital currency on any platform or blockchain.

Vision and Positioning

Agent Network Protocol (ANP) is an open-source communication protocol for intelligent agents. Its goal is to define how agents connect with each other and to build an open, secure, and efficient collaboration network for billions of agents.

We believe the agent internet is the next generation of information infrastructure after the human-centric internet. In this vision:

• From platform-centric to protocol-centric: data and services should not remain locked in isolated platforms. Agents need open protocols for direct connection.
• Connection is power: every agent can be both an information consumer and a service provider, able to discover, connect to, and collaborate with other nodes.
• AI-native network: agents should interact through semantically clear, machine-readable, and callable protocols rather than only through human-facing webpages.

Why We Need ANP

Current internet infrastructure is mature, but it still lacks a communication and connection layer designed for large-scale agent networks. ANP focuses on three challenges:

• 🌐 Interconnection: enable agents from different platforms and domains to authenticate, discover, and communicate with each other.
• 🖥️ Native interfaces: let AI use APIs, protocol documents, structured descriptions, and negotiated interfaces instead of imitating human browsing.
• 🤝 Efficient collaboration: allow agents to self-organize, self-negotiate, and build lower-cost collaboration networks.

Protocol Architecture

ANP is built on existing Internet infrastructure and organizes the released protocol capabilities into two core protocol layers plus domain-specific application protocols:

• 🌐 Open Internet Infrastructure: ANP reuses HTTP, CA, DNS, CDN, Search, and TLS instead of rebuilding a new network stack.
• 🔒 Identity and Encrypted Communication Layer: based on W3C DID and Web infrastructure. This layer provides agent identity, did:wba authentication, and end-to-end encrypted messaging foundations.
• 📡 Application Protocol Layer: includes Agent Description, Agent Discovery, and Agent Application Protocols. Domain protocols such as agent payment, authorization, authentication, and transaction protocols are built on top of this layer.
• 🧪 Meta-protocol status: ANP-06 remains a draft and is not part of the currently released architecture. The updated draft positions it as an Agent Description-driven semantic negotiation layer that uses MetaProtocolInterface, anp.get_capabilities, and anp.negotiate to select the subsequent interface, Profile, security profile, and schema.

Protocol Specification Index

The ANP Core vNext draft index and its Chinese mirror currently contain initial working drafts of ANP-03 and ANP-04. Draft presence does not modify the released 1.1 files.

Instant Messaging Profiles

The released ANP 1.1 end-to-end instant messaging suite is split into focused profiles:

1. P1 Core Binding: JSON-RPC 2.0 binding, request/response/error conventions.
2. P2 Identity and Discovery: DID-based service discovery and endpoint capability discovery.
3. P3 Direct Messaging Base Semantics: direct message sending and receipts.
4. P4 Group Messaging Base Semantics: group lifecycle, membership, and group message semantics.
5. P5 Direct End-to-End Encryption: E2EE overlay for direct messaging.
6. P6 Group End-to-End Encryption: E2EE overlay for group messaging.
7. P7 Attachments and Object Transfer: manifests, object services, and large-object transfer.
8. P8 Federation and Cross-Domain: cross-domain routing, relaying, and result witnessing.
9. P9 Message Mentions Extension: group-message mention payloads and selector semantics.

The ANP Messaging 1.2 draft index and its Chinese mirror define a legal mixed-version capability set: Base, Attachment, and Federation remain v1, while Direct E2EE and Group E2EE use v2. Ordinary Direct, Group, Mention, and Attachment operations stay addressed only by business DID or Group DID; their device fan-out remains local to the receiving domain. device_id appears only where an E2EE v2 Profile requires a cryptographic endpoint, including independent Direct sessions and multiple MLS leaves, and P8 v1 preserves device selectors only for such enclosing Profiles. Implementations MUST NOT reinterpret E2EE v1 state as v2 or silently downgrade an E2EE v2 operation.

DID Compatibility Appendices

• Appendix A: did:wba k1_ Compatibility Extension
• Appendix B: Compatibility with Native did:web

Quick Start

• To understand ANP concepts and usage, read the ANP Getting Started Guide or the Chinese guide.
• To implement agent identity and authentication, start from ANP-03: did:wba and the two DID compatibility appendices.
• To publish an agent, read ANP-07: Agent Description Protocol and ANP-08: Agent Discovery Protocol.
• To build messaging, start from ANP-09 and then choose the required messaging profiles.
• To run demos, see ANP Sample Programs.

Protocol SDK

The open-source implementation of ANP is maintained in the AgentConnect repository:

• https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentConnect

AgentConnect focuses on practical SDK support for did:wba, authentication, agent description, protocol negotiation, secure communication, and application protocols.

Repository Layout

• 01-*.md, 03-*.md, 04-*.md, 06-*.md, 07-*.md, 08-*.md, 09-*.md: core English protocol documents.
• vnext/: candidate drafts for core protocols 01–09; currently seeded with ANP-03 and ANP-04. chinese/vnext/ is the Chinese mirror.
• application/: application-layer protocols such as AP2.
• message/: the released ANP 1.1 end-to-end instant messaging Profile suite; message/vnext/ contains separately versioned v2 drafts.
• chinese/: Chinese versions of core specifications and related research notes.
• docs/: guides, extended reading, and community operations documents.
• blogs/: articles and protocol analysis.
• examples/: sample ADP assets, API interface examples, and messaging vNext multi-device JSON examples.
• images/ and standard/: shared figures and standardization references.

Further Reading

• Extended Reading
• ANP Technical White Paper
• AgentConnect Examples

Milestones

• Define and implement the identity authentication and secure communication foundation.
• Release did:wba v1.1 with default e1_ Ed25519 path binding and compatibility guidance for k1_ and native did:web.
• Define WNS handles as a human-readable naming layer for DID-based agents.
• Release the Agent Description Protocol and Agent Discovery Protocol.
• Release the meta-protocol after the draft is stabilized.
• Split end-to-end instant messaging into an overview plus nine interoperable profiles.
• Stabilize and review core protocol vNext drafts (currently ANP-03 and ANP-04).
• Stabilize and review the separately versioned multi-device messaging vNext draft.
• Add the AP2 agent payment protocol to the application layer.
• Continue aligning SDK implementations and examples with the 1.1 specification set.
• Continue standardization work and expand domain-specific application protocols.

Contact Us

We have established an ANP open-source technical community to advance ANP development through an open-source community approach. We sincerely invite you to join our community.

• Email: chgaowei@gmail.com
• Discord: https://discord.gg/sFjBKTY7sB
• Official website: https://agent-network-protocol.com/
• GitHub: https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol
• WeChat: flow10240

Contributing

We welcome contributions in any form. Please refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.

Contributors

We extend our sincere gratitude to all contributors for their outstanding work and dedication to the Agent Network Protocol project.

• View the full contributors list

License

This project is open-sourced under the MIT License. For details, please refer to LICENSE. The copyright is held by GaoWei Chang. Any user of this project must retain the original copyright notice and license file.

Copyright Notice

Copyright (c) 2024 GaoWei Chang This file is released under the MIT License. You are free to use and modify it, but must retain this copyright notice.