Agent Card (A2A)

What is an Agent Card?

For AI agents from different vendors to work together, they need a standardized way to introduce themselves to each other. The Agent Card takes on exactly this role — comparable to a robots.txt for web crawlers, but for agent communication. For companies building multi-agent systems, Agent Cards are the key to automatic discovery and seamless integration of new agents.

An Agent Card is a standardized JSON document in the Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A) that describes the capabilities, interfaces, and properties of an AI agent in machine-readable form. It works like a digital business card: other agents can read the Agent Card and immediately understand what the agent can do, how to communicate with it, and what tasks it can take on.

The Agent Card typically contains the agent’s name and description, a list of its capabilities (skills), supported communication protocols, authentication methods, and availability metadata. It is provided as a JSON file at a standardized URL — comparable to a robots.txt for web crawlers. Other agents in the Agentic Mesh can retrieve this file and automatically decide whether collaboration makes sense.

For companies planning multi-agent systems, Agent Cards are an important building block. They enable automatic discovery and coordination of AI agents — without manual configuration. In the context of Agentic Engineering, Agent Cards ensure that agent ecosystems remain scalable and new agents can integrate seamlessly.