On 8 October 2026, the IETF’s Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) approved the charter for a new IETF working group, Agent Communication Protocols (`agentproto`). That moves the question of how an agent proves who it is — the core of Know Your Agent — into the IETF’s standards process.
What happened
The `agentproto` working group sits in the IETF’s Applications and Real-Time area and is chaired by Leslie Daigle and Orie Steele, with Charles Eckel as area director. The datatracker record shows the “Approve” ballot closing and IESG approving the charter on 8 October 2026, after a ballot period through late September and early October.
The charter’s stated scope is a baseline agentic dialog management protocol — the identifiers and lifecycle state needed to correlate and maintain a conversation across user-to-agent, agent-to-agent and agent-to-tool interactions — plus a reference architecture that reuses existing identity, authentication, authorization and encryption building blocks rather than inventing new ones. It explicitly leaves the application-layer protocols alone: the dialog context is designed to be carried by MCP and Agent2Agent (A2A) using their own mechanisms.
For KYA the significant part is what the charter names as a first-order consideration:
> “AI agents act as autonomous software entities that may need to be authenticated independently of the users who delegated authority to them. Establishing verifiable agent identity that is distinct from user identity enables independent revocation of agent access, scoping of agent permissions to a subset of user permissions, and auditability of agent-initiated actions distinct from user-initiated actions.”
The charter also requires mechanisms to “establish and verify the identities of agents and the users on whose behalf they act” and to preserve “delegated authorization across AI agent chains“. It directs the group to coordinate with the OAuth, WIMSE, webbotauth, SCITT and RATS working groups on identity, authorization and security questions.
Deliverables are staged through 2027–2028: a use-cases document (adopt by December 2026), an informational reference architecture (February 2027), an adopted standards-track dialog protocol (March 2027), and submission of that protocol to the IESG as a Proposed Standard by March 2028.
Why it matters for KYA
The 48 Internet-Drafts with “agent” in their titles that appeared in late September and early October were all individual drafts — none was an adopted working-group document. A chartered working group is a different commitment: it is where IETF documents are actually adopted, worked and published. For anyone tracking when agent identity stops being a vendor talking point and starts becoming interoperable plumbing, the `agentproto` charter is a concrete milestone.
Two caveats keep this in proportion:
- It is a charter, not a standard. As of 9 October 2026 the datatracker listed no working-group document for `agentproto`. The identity and authorization mechanics — the parts a practitioner actually implements — will take shape in the drafts to come, not in this approval.
- Identity here is a supporting block, not the deliverable. The group’s protocol deliverable is dialog management; identity, authentication and authorization sit in the informational reference architecture. That is a sensible division, but it means `agentproto` will assume an agent-identity layer, not define the KYA credential itself.
The practical read: if you are building agents that cross organisational boundaries, the ground is being laid for a third-party identity that is distinct from the user’s, revocable on its own, scoped below the user’s permissions, and separately auditable. Watch the working group’s first adopted drafts in 2027 — that is when implementation details become concrete.
Sources
- IETF Datatracker, `agentproto` working group: Agent Communication Protocols (agentproto) — About — charter text, chairs, area, state “Active”.
- IETF Datatracker, charter-ietf-agentproto document history — IESG approval and “State changed to Approved” recorded on 8 October 2026.
- IETF Datatracker, charter-ietf-agentproto-01 — approved charter text and milestones.
Know Your Agent (KYA) explains agent identity, verification and accountability. This is an explainer, not legal or compliance advice — see our Sources & methodology. New to KYA? Start with What is Know Your Agent? and the glossary.