[Agentproto] Re: Gunter Van de Velde's No Objection on charter-ietf-agentproto-00-01: (with COMMENT)

["Gunter van de Velde (Nokia)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Charles,

Thanks, that works for me. Be well,
G/


________________________________
From: Charles Eckel (eckelcu) <eckelcu=[e-mail]>
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2026 1:28 AM
To: gunter <[e-mail]>
Cc: The IESG <[e-mail]>; [e-mail] <[e-mail]>; [e-mail] <[e-mail]>
Subject: [iesg] Re: [Agentproto] Gunter Van de Velde's No Objection on charter-ietf-agentproto-00-01: (with COMMENT)


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Hi Gunter,

Thanks for your feedback regarding what "protocol" means in the context of the agentproto charter (tracked in Issue #111).

In reviewing our work-in-progress charter text (in GitHub but not yet uploaded to the datatracker), we believe this is answered by the following:

"The agentic dialog management protocol neither replaces application-layer agent communication protocols nor defines a new transport protocol. It defines dialog identifiers, lifecycle semantics, and the propagation of dialog context, together with bindings specifying how that context is carried over existing IETF protocols. A dialog context is defined independently of any particular application: a participant that understands the dialog context can correlate and maintain a dialog, and the protocol does not constrain how the application is structured or what content it exchanges."

We also explored further clarifications in PR #118, but weren't able to reach consensus on specific text changes beyond what is already captured.

Please let me know if you are ok with this, or if you feel an additional change is still needed.

Thanks again,
Charles

On Sep 16, 2026, at 9:29 AM, Charles Eckel (eckelcu) <[e-mail]> wrote:

Hi Gunter,

Thank you for your support for this work.

I created the following issue to track your question regarding the use of the term “protocol”.
https://github.com/ietf-artarea/charters/issues/111

Cheers,
Charles

On Sep 16, 2026, at 2:35 PM, Gunter Van de Velde via Datatracker <[e-mail]> wrote:

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COMMENT:
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I am a confident supported for this work in AI space.

This proposal sits primarily in the application space, outside Routing, so my
expertise in this area is limited.

I found the use of the term “protocol” somewhat ambiguous. In a routing
context, I would normally understand a protocol to mean a wire protocol with
its own message framing, common header, and mandatory or optional fields or
TLVs. I suspect that is not what is intended here.

Could the charter clarify what “protocol” means in this context? In particular,
is the WG expected to define a new application protocol or wire encoding
carried over HTTP or QUIC, or a data model and serialization—for example, using
XML or JSON—for exchanging information over existing protocols? Clarifying this
would make the intended scope easier to understand.