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A2A (Agent2Agent) gives independent AI agent systems a shared way to discover one another, exchange messages, and coordinate work. It standardizes communication—not an agent’s reasoning, memory, or private tools—so agents built on different frameworks can interoperate when both sides implement compatible protocol behavior and configure the required access.

What A2A does—and what it does not

The A2A Protocol specification, version 1.0.0, defines A2A as “an open standard designed to facilitate communication and interoperability between independent, potentially opaque AI agent systems.” In practice, one agent can ask another to do work without either system needing to expose its internal state or implementation to the other. Read the A2A Protocol specification.

A2A is a communication and task-coordination layer. It gives agents a common format for describing capabilities, sending information, and tracking work; it does not make their underlying models, tools, or decision-making logic identical. A connection still requires compatible protocol behavior, usable endpoint and capability information, and any authentication the deployment requires.

How an A2A interaction is organized

Agent Card: how a client finds out what an agent offers

A server publishes an Agent Card, a JSON document describing the agent’s identity, capabilities, skills, service endpoint, and authentication requirements. A client can use that information to learn how to reach the remote agent and what it advertises. An advertised capability is not a guarantee that every deployment supports it in the same way; check the implementation and version.

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Client and server: roles in an exchange

The client initiates a request for a user or another system, and the server is the remote agent system exposing an A2A endpoint. These are interaction roles, not permanent labels: the same agent can act as a client in one exchange and a server in another.

Messages, tasks, and artifacts: communication, work, and output

A message represents a communication turn and contains one or more parts. A part can carry text, a file reference, or structured data. A task is a stateful unit of work with an identifier and lifecycle; its result can include artifacts, such as a document or structured output, also composed of parts.

Streaming and asynchronous updates: progress when work takes time

A2A materials describe streaming for incremental task updates and push notifications for longer-running work or situations where a client disconnects. These are protocol capabilities, not features to assume in every agent. Confirm that the relevant capability is advertised and implemented in the version you are using.

What this means when connecting agents built with different frameworks

A2A is designed for interoperability between independent agent systems, including systems whose internals are opaque to each other. The practical benefit is a shared communication contract: each side can exchange task requests and results without adopting the other’s framework or exposing its internal tools and memory.

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That contract alone does not complete a deployment. Before treating two agents as connected, establish that their protocol versions and behavior are compatible, that the client can reach the endpoint described by the server’s Agent Card, and that authentication is configured for the environment. Decide whether the interaction needs a straightforward message exchange, streaming updates, or asynchronous notifications, and verify support for that path on both sides.

Which A2A version should you use?

The official repository’s specification page identifies v1.0.0 as the latest released specification at the time of the source material. It points to specification/a2a.proto as the normative definition for protocol data objects and request/response messages. Check the repository’s versioned materials when implementing, and state the version your agents use; examples written for earlier versions may not match the current specification. Check the official A2A repository and specification.

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Who maintains A2A?

The Linux Foundation announced the A2A project on June 23, 2025, describing it as an open protocol created by Google. Current A2A documentation says it was originally developed by Google and donated to the Linux Foundation. Read the Linux Foundation announcement.

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