{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/agent-name-service-ans-a-universal-directory","title":"Agent Name Service (ANS): A Universal Directory for Secure AI Agent Discovery and Interoperability","arxiv_id":"2505.10609","date":"2025-05-15","proceeding":null,"authors":["Ken Huang","Vineeth Sai Narajala","Idan Habler","Akram Sheriff"],"abstract":"The proliferation of AI agents requires robust mechanisms for secure discovery. This paper introduces the Agent Name Service (ANS), a novel architecture based on DNS addressing the lack of a public agent discovery framework. ANS provides a protocol-agnostic registry infrastructure that leverages Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates for verifiable agent identity and trust. The architecture features several key innovations: a formalized agent registration and renewal mechanism for lifecycle management; DNS-inspired naming conventions with capability-aware resolution; a modular Protocol Adapter Layer supporting diverse communication standards (A2A, MCP, ACP etc.); and precisely defined algorithms for secure resolution. We implement structured communication using JSON Schema and conduct a comprehensive threat analysis of our proposal. The result is a foundational directory service addressing the core challenges of secured discovery and interaction in multi-agent systems, paving the way for future interoperable, trustworthy, and scalable agent ecosystems.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10609v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.10609v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"agent-name-service-ans-a-universal-directory","repo_url":"https://github.com/appsec2008/acnbp","is_official":0,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"ai-agent","task_name":"AI Agent"},{"task_slug":"management","task_name":"Management"}],"methods":[{"method_slug":"adapter","method_name":"Adapter"},{"method_slug":null,"method_name":null}],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}