AI agents can work autonomously by delegating tasks to different agents, models and tools. Various protocols are evolving to standardize the communication between agents. This post describes some protocols and key capabilities.

Niklas Heidloff

Three major protocols are emerging to standardize AI agent communication: MCP (Model Context Protocol) by Anthropic, ACP (Agent Communication Protocol) by IBM, and A2A by Google. MCP focuses on tool invocation and has gained rapid adoption due to its simplicity, but lacks advanced features like streaming, memory, and asynchronous execution. ACP addresses these gaps by providing built-in memory management, streaming capabilities, and support for long-running tasks with human-in-the-loop interactions. The protocols serve as "Swagger for agents," enabling modular AI architectures where agents can delegate tasks to other agents and tools efficiently.

Comparison of Agent Protocols MCP, ACP and A2A