The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#31

Post by knowaveragejoe » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:07 PM UTC

_pdp_ wrote: post #7

Link to repo: https://github.com/google/A2A Docs: https://google.github.io/A2A/#/documentation I think they are trying to ride the MCP hype as well with their own implementation that is also meh. MCP itself is also an over-engineered implementation of AI plugins by OpenAI. Obviously the end game is control over a standard which can act as a strategic tool for boosting valuations or even better product positioning. Th…

> MCP itself is also an over-engineered implementation of AI plugins by OpenAI

I'm confused by this comment and a reply that both seem to be under this assumption... first, it's from Anthropic, and second, it's hardly over-engineered. If you actually go and try and implement a specific MCP server's functionality from first principles into, say, some chat client of your choosing, you will quickly run into the problems that MCP addresses.

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#32

Post by esafak » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

sharemywin wrote: post #5

on it's face this kind of seems dumb. aren't agents supposed to be adaptable enough to handle any protocol?

1. Agents don't know the APIs. This is a way for you to declare them.

2. You get to decide what functionality you want to expose agents to.

3. An API enables reliable tool use.

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#33

Post by candiddevmike » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:09 PM UTC

rogerthis wrote: post #24

Looking at partners of this effort, I wonder what problems does A2A create to serve as a solution.

As I understand it, it enables SaaS for Agents, along with the associated consumption and billing. All of those partners are going to have some kind of agent subscription for you to plug into your enterprise LLM of choice.

I see this as Slack bots 2.0. Maybe this will create real revenue opportunities where the original chatops didn't.

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#34

Post by MajidManzarpour » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

devops000 wrote: post #15

Do you know real use cases of agents? Actually used and that have been using for a while. Not just for curiosity. I read about them only for hypothetical scenarios. Is it a real thing?

[dead]

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#35

Post by qntty » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:18 PM UTC

flakiness wrote: post #9

> A2A is an open protocol that complements Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), which provides helpful tools and context to agents. A "server" sample: https://github.com/google/A2A/tree/main/samples/js/src/serve... So it looks like the point is that it keeps the connection/context open for multiple interactions vs. MCP, which is more like pure request-response?

I don't know if it would be right to call MCP pure request/response, since unlike HTTP, it's a stateful protocol.

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#36

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:19 PM UTC

With all this agents talks, maybe I should dust off my old Tcl books on Agent Tcl.

https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/dissertations/62/

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#37

Post by srameshc » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #36

With all this agents talks, maybe I should dust off my old Tcl books on Agent Tcl. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/dissertations/62/

That looks interesting from abstract. Can you please explain how these two can be interconnected ?

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#38

Post by jsheard » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #19

I just published some notes on MCP security and prompt injection. MCP doesn't have security flaws in the protocol itself, but the patterns it encourage (providing LLMs with access to tools that can act on the user's behalf while they also may be exposed to text from untrusted sources) are rife for prompt injection attacks: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/9/mcp-prompt-injection/

Every decade or so we just forget that in-band signaling is a bad idea and make all the same mistakes again it seems. 1960s phone companies at least had the excuse of having to retrofit their control systems onto existing single-channel lines, and run the whole operation on roughly the processing power of a pocket calculator. What's our excuse?

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#39

Post by jason-phillips » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

This doesn't say anything about the protocol other than what would be obvious (a JSON card describing the agent's schema) and that it will use http (such a safe, but low-effort bet). I was hoping for more, but with so many cooks in the kitchen, I guess I'm not surprised.

Re: The Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A)

#40

Post by joezydeco » Wed, Apr 09, 2025, 2:24 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #13

Great, another Agent 2 Agent protocol. One more of those and we'll have a complete set! OK, I'm being a little bit facetious. But there has been an awful lot of work in this space (or closely related space). Going back to FIPA[1], KQML[2], DAML+OIL[3], etc., up through the more recent AGNTCY[4] and Agent Communication Protocol[5] stuff, there's a lot "out there". [1]: http://www.fipa.org/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.or…

Wasn't XML supposed to be this holy grail of interop as well?