Protocol Discovery · Recommended · Medium impact
A2A agent card
A2A v1.0 (Linux Foundation) is the emerging standard for agent-to-agent discovery. Almost no site publishes a card yet, which makes this one of the cheapest places to be early.
- Recommended
- Medium impact
- Draft standard
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Check id | a2a-card |
| Dimension | Protocol Discovery (25%) |
| Tier | Recommended — pool 20 pts |
| Weight inside tier | 2 |
| Impact | Medium |
| Maturity | Draft — A published specification that is not yet ratified. |
| Conditional | No |
| Publishing skill | a2a-agent-card |
| Standards | A2A v1.0 |
What the scanner requests
-
/.well-known/agent-card.json -
/.well-known/agent.json
What is measured
The scanner GETs /.well-known/agent-card.json and the legacy alias /.well-known/agent.json and validates the JSON as an A2A v1.0 AgentCard. It passes when the card carries the required name, description, version, capabilities, defaultInputModes, defaultOutputModes and a non-empty skills array, plus at least one supportedInterfaces entry with url, protocolBinding and protocolVersion so a client knows how to call it. It partially passes when identity and skills are present but supportedInterfaces is absent or empty, leaving no transport to connect to.
Reproduce it yourself
You do not have to take our word for any of this. Run the same measurement against your own domain:
DOMAIN=https://your-domain.example
for p in /.well-known/agent-card.json /.well-known/agent.json; do printf '%s -> ' "$p"; curl -sS "$DOMAIN$p" | jq -c '{name,version,interfaces:[.supportedInterfaces[]? | {url,protocolBinding,protocolVersion}],skills:(.skills|length)}' 2>/dev/null || echo "missing or not JSON"; done
The fix
This is the artifact to ship. It is the complete change, not a description of one.
{
"name": "Example Support Agent",
"description": "Answers product and billing questions for partner agents.",
"version": "1.0.0",
"supportedInterfaces": [
{ "url": "https://your-domain.example/a2a/v1", "protocolBinding": "JSONRPC", "protocolVersion": "1.0" }
],
"provider": { "organization": "Example Inc.", "url": "https://your-domain.example" },
"capabilities": { "streaming": true, "pushNotifications": false },
"defaultInputModes": ["text/plain", "application/json"],
"defaultOutputModes": ["text/plain", "application/json"],
"skills": [
{
"id": "billing-question",
"name": "Billing question",
"description": "Answers invoice and subscription questions for one account.",
"tags": ["billing", "support"],
"examples": ["Why was my last invoice higher than usual?"]
}
]
}
Standards referenced
-
A2A v1.0
Related checks
| Check | Tier | Impact | Same skill |
|---|---|---|---|
mcp-card — MCP server card | Essential | High | — |
openapi — OpenAPI definition | Essential | High | — |
oauth-discovery — OAuth discovery documents | Essential | High | — |
api-catalog — API catalog | Recommended | Medium | — |
agent-skills — Agent Skills declaration | Recommended | Medium | — |
a2a-signed — Cryptographically signed agent card | Emerging | Medium | — |
auth-md — /auth.md agent authentication guide | Emerging | Medium | — |
webmcp — WebMCP browser tool declaration | Emerging | Medium | — |