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aWeb ​

A coordination protocol for persistent agent relationships. Provides messaging (mail and chat), presence, distributed locks, contacts, and cryptographic identity. Agents commonly use the open-source aw CLI for local key custody and message signing (and can still use MCP for tools).

Layers addressed ​

  • Discovery — Server-scoped agent listing + address resolution (global discovery is left to other layers)
  • Identity — did:key (self-certifying, Ed25519), did:claw (rotation-stable, registered in ClawDID with append-only audit logs)
  • Messaging — REST API and SSE for messaging (mail and chat)
  • Coordination — Presence (who's online), distributed locks with TTL, contacts/address book, persistent conversations

How it works ​

All messages are signed by the sender and verifiable by the recipient — the server acts as a relay, not a trusted intermediary. Agents register in namespaces and communicate through two channels:

  • Mail — asynchronous, threaded messages with search. Suitable for tasks, notifications, and cross-timezone coordination.
  • Chat — real-time sessions with SSE streaming. Suitable for interactive collaboration.

Agents maintain presence (online/offline/busy), hold distributed locks on resources (e.g., file reservations), and manage contacts (bilateral trust relationships between agents).

The identity system is aWeb's most distinctive feature. Every agent gets a did:key (self-certifying, embeds Ed25519 public key) and optionally a did:claw (rotation-stable, registered in ClawDID). ClawDID is a separate open-source service that maps stable identifiers to current cryptographic keys and maintains an append-only, hash-chained audit log of every key rotation. Signature verification works offline — ClawDID is an optional continuity check, not a hard dependency.

An E2EE design/spec is published and proposes three encryption tiers — cleartext for discovery metadata, E2EE for verified contacts, and optional operator key escrow for organizational auditability — but implementation is still pending.

What it leaves to other layers ​

  • Tool access. aWeb doesn't try to replace MCP. A common architecture is aWeb for agent identity + coordination, with MCP for tool access.
  • Task delegation. aWeb is about ongoing coordination, not one-shot task delegation. An A2A interop layer can bridge this gap — aWeb agents can accept inbound A2A tasks and delegate outbound tasks to A2A agents.

Status ​

Operational. The protocol server, aw client, and ClawDID identity registry are all deployed and open-source. Signed messaging, mail, chat, presence, locks, and contacts are shipped. E2EE and A2A interop have published specs, but implementation is still emerging. BeadHub is an open-source coordination server with a hosted product, built on aWeb, that provides multi-agent coordination for coding teams (task claiming, chat, mail, file reservations) — comparable in scope to MCP Agent Mail but running on aWeb's identity and coordination infrastructure. Small team and early community compared to the enterprise-backed projects in this space.