Appearance
AGNTCY
Not a single protocol but a full infrastructure stack for what its creators call the "Internet of Agents." Launched by Cisco's Outshift in March 2025, now under the Linux Foundation with 70+ supporting companies. Formative members include Cisco, Dell, Google, Oracle, and Red Hat, with additional backing from LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, and Weaviate.
Layers addressed
- Discovery — OASF (Open Agent Schema Framework) for describing agents, Agent Directory for lookup
- Identity — Cryptographically verifiable agent identity and access control
- Messaging — ACP (Agent Connect Protocol) for inter-agent messaging, SLIM (Secure Low-latency Interactive Messaging) for quantum-safe messaging via MLS
Also provides observability SDKs and deployment tooling.
How it works
Multiple components that address different parts of the stack:
- OASF — a standardized way to describe agent capabilities (like OpenAPI for agents)
- Agent Directory — a discovery service for finding agents
- ACP — the communication protocol between agents
- SLIM — encrypted messaging using the MLS (Messaging Layer Security) protocol, with quantum-safe cipher suites
The components are designed to work alongside A2A and MCP, not replace them. AGNTCY positions itself as the infrastructure layer that connects everything else.
What it leaves to other layers
- Identity. Has agent identity components but the identity layer is less mature than the messaging and discovery components.
- Coordination. Focuses on messaging and infrastructure rather than persistent agent relationships.
The scope is ambitious — covering discovery, messaging, security, and observability — which means many components are still in specification phase. The overlap between ACP, A2A, and SLIM can be confusing (when do you use which?).
Status
Active development. Many components are in specification or early implementation phase. Strong backing from networking (Cisco) and AI tooling (LangChain, LlamaIndex) companies. Linux Foundation governance.