The Agent Network Protocol is an independent, open specification set for agents to identify, describe and discover each other across the open internet, including agent description documents and active discovery at /.well-known/agent-descriptions.
Agent Network Protocol (ANP)
The Agent Network Protocol is an independent, open specification set for agents to identify, describe and discover each other across the open internet, including agent description documents and active discovery at /.well-known/agent-descriptions.
Where it stands
As of 2026-10-16, the Agentic Standards Map records:
Specification set ANP 1.2, GitHub release v1.2 of 2026-09-24 (v1.1 of 2026-06-27, 1.0 of 2025-05-19); the README marks ANP-02, ANP-03, ANP-04, ANP-07 and ANP-08 “Released v1.2”, the Messaging 1.2 catalog as published with profile P6 “candidate”, and ANP-05, ANP-06 and ANP-10 as drafts. The release notes say “Publication of specifications does not mean implementations already support ANP 1.2”.
Why it matters to agents
ANP-08 defines active discovery at https://{domain}/.well-known/agent-descriptions and passive registration with search agents; agent-descriptions is not found in the IANA well-known URI registry (copy updated 2026-10-07, read 2026-10-14). ANP-07 describes Agent Description documents and lists among its aims “Defining core vocabularies for agent basic information, products, services, interfaces, etc.”. …
Sources
- https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/blob/main/README.md
- https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/releases/tag/v1.2
- https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/blob/main/08-ANP-Agent-Discovery-Protocol-Specification.md
- https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/blob/main/07-anp-agent-description-protocol-specification.md
- https://github.com/agent-network-protocol/AgentNetworkProtocol/blob/main/application/10-anp-agent-payment-protocol-specification.md
- https://w3c-cg.github.io/ai-agent-protocol/protocol.html
Status and relevance quoted, shortened, from the Agentic Standards Map by Francesco Marinoni Moretto, CC BY 4.0, https://frmoretto.github.io/agentic-standards-map/. The full entry, with every dated source, is in map.json under anp.
Industry: cross-domain
Related standards
Standards this one builds on, supersedes, profiles or is commonly deployed beside.
