Agent Card
A machine-readable document published by an agent that advertises what it is and what it can do — identity, declared capabilities, and the endpoints through which another agent may interact with it.
Why it matters
An Agent Card is an advertisement. It states what an agent claims it can do, not what any principal has permitted it to do, and not what it will actually do when asked. Treating a capability advertisement as evidence of authorization is a category error with real consequences.
What it is not
These are routinely confused with Agent Card. The distinctions are not pedantic — each one has consequences for how a system is governed.
A Model Card documents a trained model — its data, evaluation, and limitations. An Agent Card documents a running service and its interface. Different object, different lifecycle.
A tool manifest declares what an agent may reach. An Agent Card declares what an agent offers. One faces inward, one outward.
An Agent Card is self-published and self-asserted. An authority grant is issued by a principal and is the thing that actually confers permission.
Relationships
Typed edges into the rest of the ontology. These are what make the canon traversable rather than merely readable.
| Verb | Target | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
relatedTo | Agent Identity | An association too weak or too general for a stronger verb. |
relatedTo | Capability Discovery | An association too weak or too general for a stronger verb. |
dependsOn | A2A | The subject cannot function correctly without the object. |
Record
| Canonical identifier | QIS-TERM-00001 |
| Status | Canonical industry term |
| Adoption | Emerging |
| Domain · Layer | Identity & discovery · Governance |
| Origin | A2A (Agent2Agent) protocol, contributed to the Linux Foundation. |
| Semantic aliases | None recorded. |
| First published | 2026-08-02 |
| Last reviewed | 2026-08-02 · 180-day cycle |
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