WG Review: Discovery of Agents With Names (dawn)

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

A new IETF WG has been proposed in the Internet Area. The IESG has not made
any determination yet. The following draft charter was submitted, and is
provided for informational purposes only. Please send your comments to the
IESG mailing list ([e-mail]) by 2026-10-19.

Discovery of Agents With Names (dawn)
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Current status: Proposed WG

Chairs:
  Adrian Farrel <[e-mail]>
  Wes Hardaker <[e-mail]>

Assigned Area Director:
  Éric Vyncke <[e-mail]>

Internet Area Directors:
  Éric Vyncke <[e-mail]>

Mailing list:
  Address: [e-mail]
  To subscribe: https://mailman3.ietf.org/mailman3/lists/dawn.ietf.org/
  Archive: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/dawn

Group page: https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/dawn/

Charter: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/charter-ietf-dawn/

# Discovery of Agents With Names (DAWN) - Proposed Charter

Clients often need to discover information about AI systems and resources
(e.g., AI agents) before interacting with them.  This requires obtaining
information about how to reach the resources and what they offer.

The focus of the DAWN Working Group (WG) is on how a client can discover
public properties of AI resources to facilitate subsequent interactions such
as selection, invocation, or communication. DAWN focuses on this initial
discovery only and does not include open-ended search, semantic matchmaking,
ranking, or selection of an AI resource based on capabilities or user intent.

Note that discovery may be an iterative process, and may use referrals,
direct transfer, delegation, or indirection.

To support these goals, the working group will specify an interoperable and
generic discovery mechanism that builds on existing protocols and tools,
benefits from established trust models, supports proven delegation and
federation architectures, and allows organizations to have independently
published discovery information.  The WG will also specify the minimum public
discovery information (e.g., type, reachability information, communication
protocol, services).

## Scope

Discovery in the DAWN WG context is limited to a client requesting and
obtaining the minimum public discovery details for an AI resource within
different use cases (or deployment contexts): - within the local network,
e.g., discover all agents in this shop; - within an organization, e.g.,
discover all agents available to employees within their employer’s
infrastructure; - between cooperating parties with trust relationships over
the public Internet, e.g., discover all agents of example.org, for all its
customers/members.

The AI resource may be an individual named agent or a service such as a
catalog that will further the discovery process.

Where possible, any solutions created by this WG will be built in a modular
way using existing IETF protocols that provide support for any needed
communication, authentication, and privacy. The WG will consider DNS and mDNS
as mechanisms upon which to build a discovery protocol.

The WG work items will provide integrity of all the discovery information
exchanged between the DAWN parties.

Although initially focused on discovery of AI agents, the WG should strive to
produce results that are general and reusable within other discovery contexts
if possible.

## Deliverables

The working group will produce the following standards-track and
informational documents. The work on these deliverables is expected to
proceed in parallel.

### Terminology (May be published as Informational RFC)

A document describing all the terms used by the other DAWN documents. This
document may either be published as an informational RFC or be included in
the Architecture RFC.

### Use Cases and Applicability (May be published as an informational RFC)

A document describing broad DAWN use case categories.

### Discovery Architecture (Informational RFC(s))

One or more informational documents (possibly one per use case) describing
deployment models, requirements (including about the minimum public discovery
information), and the resulting DAWN architecture.

This deliverable may be held until the Protocol work is considered stable.

### Protocol (Standards Track document(s))

One or more standards track specifications (possibly one per use case)
defining interoperable mechanisms for the initial discovery of public
information about AI resources within the deployment contexts described above
(including the definition of the minimum public discovery information)..

## Out of Scope

Specifically out of scope for the DAWN WG during its initial phase are:

- Exchange of capability information beyond the minimum public discovery
information, i.e., catalogs of capabilities are out of scope. - All
communication beyond the initial discovery process. - AI resource indexing
and searching across the wider Internet. - Identity management of AI agents,
tools, and skills. - Trust management and trust evaluation methods beyond
secure content exchange between DAWN parties.

Future charter for DAWN or other WGs may take on these tasks.

## Coordination with Other Working Groups and Organizations

The DAWN working group will coordinate with WIMSE and OAUTH WG as well as
other WGs related to DNS, discovery, identities, or AI. It will also
coordinate with external standards bodies as necessary.

Milestones:

  Jun 2027 - Optional submission of the DAWN terminology to the IESG for
  publication.

  Dec 2027 - Submission of the DAWN Protocol specification to the IESG for
  publication.

  Jan 2028 - Submission of the DAWN Architecture document to the IESG for
  publication.