ANS Standards

This document defines AgentNet Standards (ANS) v2.0, a formal specification governing the structure, operation, and governance of the AgentNet ecosystem.

ANS v2.0 supersedes all prior drafts, proposals, white papers, and informal descriptions of AgentNet protocols and SHALL be treated as the authoritative normative reference for all conforming implementations.

This document is intended for public distribution via agentnet.ai and for use by implementers, registrars, resolver operators, publishers, institutional participants, and standards organizations.

ANS v2.0 specifies:

• The Capsule data structure and its mandatory properties
• The Node identity model and lifecycle
• The obligations and constraints of Resolvers
• The obligations and accreditation requirements of Registrars
• The formal definition of LD-RAG (Linked Data Retrieval Augmented Generation)
• Governance, neutrality, and update mechanisms
• Validation, compliance, and security requirements

ANS v2.0 does not prescribe:

• Business models, pricing structures, or monetization mechanisms
• Licensing terms or intellectual property frameworks
• Jurisdiction-specific legal enforcement mechanisms
• Application-layer user interfaces or end-user experiences

Such concerns are addressed in companion governance, policy, or ecosystem documents and are intentionally excluded from this standard.

Statements containing these terms define normative requirements. All other statements are informative and non-binding.

The AgentNet ecosystem is founded on the following principles:

• Publisher Sovereignty. Authoritative control over Capsules resides exclusively with the Publisher.
• Ontology Neutrality. No ontology, schema, or vocabulary SHALL be privileged, suppressed, or mandated by this standard.
• Federation Over Centralization. Identity issuance and data resolution SHALL support federated, multi-operator deployment.
• Auditability and Transparency. Identity, publication, and resolution events SHALL be observable, attributable, and verifiable.
• Machine-First Design. All specifications are optimized for deterministic machine consumption and automated reasoning.

ANS v2.0 is designed to coexist with existing web, data, and ontology standards.

Adoption of ANS v2.0:

• SHALL NOT require exclusive use of AgentNet mechanisms
• SHALL NOT preclude simultaneous use of alternative or complementary systems
• SHALL NOT invalidate or supersede existing standards by implication

ANS defines an interoperable framework intended to operate alongside established protocols, registries, and data ecosystems.

ANS versions follow a major.minor.patch structure.

• Minor and patch revisions within the ANS v2.x series SHALL be backward compatible.
• Major revisions MAY introduce breaking changes and SHALL be accompanied by formal transition guidance and deprecation notice.

Implementers SHOULD track version identifiers explicitly and SHOULD NOT assume forward compatibility across major version boundaries.

ANS v2.0 reserves the right to define additional sections or companion standards in future versions, including but not limited to:

• Cryptographic attestation and signature frameworks
• Decentralized or verifiable identifier integration
• Automated compliance verification mechanisms
• Formal trust scoring or reputation signaling

The absence of such mechanisms in ANS v2.0 SHALL NOT be interpreted as preclusion of their future inclusion.

An implementation SHALL be considered ANS v2.0–conformant only if it satisfies all applicable MUST and SHALL requirements defined in this document for the roles it claims to implement.

Partial, selective, or conditional compliance MUST NOT be represented as full conformance.