Agents
ACP
2025ActivePublished: 29 September 2026Updated: 29 September 2026Published
Key
innovation
An open, REST-based standard for AI-agent interoperability: it enables communication between agents built on different frameworks regardless of the tech stack.
Category
Agents
Abstraction level
Pattern
Operation level
Agent runtimeOrchestrationSystem
Use cases
Interoperability of agents across frameworksMulti-agent systems and orchestrationConnecting agents, apps and humansAgent discovery in online/offline environments
How it works
Agents expose ACP-compliant REST endpoints; messages carry MIME-typed content (multipart), enabling exchange of text, media and structured data. Calls can be asynchronous (with polling/streaming) or synchronous. A discovery mechanism (online and offline) lets agents find available peers and their capabilities. Because it is plain HTTP, integration needs no SDK, though official SDKs help.
Problem solved
The AI-agent landscape is fragmented: agents from different frameworks cannot talk to each other. ACP provides a common, REST-based agent-to-agent communication language.
Components
REST APITransport
Simple, HTTP-aligned endpoints for agent-to-agent communication.
MIME-typed messagesMessage format
Content identified by MIME types (text, media, data).
Agent discoveryAdvertising/discovery
Finding agents and their capabilities (online and offline).
Evolution
2025
ACP introduced as an open standard (BeeAI, Linux Foundation)
Inflection point2025
ACP becomes part of the broader A2A standard under the Linux Foundation