ards-project/ard-spec

What it solves

Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) provides a standardized way to catalog, search, and discover agentic resources—such as MCP servers, A2A agent cards, skills, and APIs—across federated networks of discovery services. It prevents the fragmentation of agentic capabilities by creating a common language for how these resources are described and found.

How it works

ARD is a specification that defines a federated, domain-anchored standard. It includes formal definitions through CDDL, JSON Schema, and OpenAPI definitions to ensure that different discovery services can communicate and share information about available agentic resources consistently.

Who it’s for

Developers and architects building AI agents, discovery services, and callable services (like MCP servers) who need a standardized protocol for making their capabilities discoverable to other agents or systems.

Highlights

• Federated Architecture: Supports discovery across networks of services rather than a single central registry.
• Domain-Anchored: Uses a domain-anchored approach to cataloging resources.
• Formal Schemas: Provides JSON Schema and OpenAPI definitions for strict conformance.
• Conformance Tooling: Includes tools to test if an implementation follows the specification.