Engineering
The technical areas the Foundation is investigating. They are conceptual until a specification says otherwise.
Concept versus published
Nothing on this page is a published specification. Each area carries a status: “Under investigation”, “Prototype (not a standard)”, “Drafting” or “Published”. Areas marked as a prototype are being tried in an open reference prototype; that is an experiment, not a standard, and its formats may change. The rest are under investigation.
How the areas relate
A conceptual grouping of the work. The specifications will be modular and versioned, so an implementation can adopt what it needs without adopting everything.
- Describe Common data modelCapability model
- Find Discovery and directories
- Act Agent interactionVendor integration
- Trust Security and trust
- Connect (optional, later) Directory interoperability
Areas
Common data model
One shared vocabulary for describing what exists in the world an agent has to act on.
- Businesses and organisations
- Services and products
- Locations
- Availability and pricing
- Policies and operational information
Capability model
A way to state what an agent can actually do, not just what a business publishes.
- Search products
- Check availability
- Retrieve pricing
- Create bookings and submit orders
- Check order status
Discovery and directories
How a compatible directory publishes its information, and how compatible clients find and read it.
- Directory description
- Retrieval by compatible clients
- Independent operation
Agent interaction
How compatible agents request information, invoke supported actions and process results.
- Requests and responses
- Invoking capabilities
- Handling results and errors
Vendor integration
How existing platforms, APIs and service providers are represented without rebuilding them.
- Payment, booking and inventory platforms
- Existing APIs as implementation detail
Security and trust
Identity, permissions and consent must be part of the design, not added afterwards.
- Authentication and authorisation
- Verification of directory entries and providers
- User-authorised actions
- Safe handling of sensitive operations
- Secure communication
Directory interoperability
An optional, later capability. Independent directories may choose to exchange discovery information.
- Referencing other directories
- Permissions and data-sharing rules
- Never mandatory, never assumed
Directory interoperability does not assume that directories federate or share their databases. The model, permissions, discovery mechanisms and data-sharing rules will be defined through future specifications, and will be optional for every directory.