Agents.json
AI
agent tooling specification
SHOW HN2025
212points
69comments
#293of 3,837 in 2025
Top 8%of 2025 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
8 positive, 21 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 8 critical, out of 38 comments about the project. Thread score +0.04.
Idea: 4 for, 3 againstDocs: 1 for, 1 againstPricing: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Good direction; wants a protocol to win the agent API space
From 2 comments
I've been following agents.json for a little while. I think it has legs, and would love to see some protocol win this space soon. Will be interesting to see where the state/less…
thomasfromcdnjs on HNAgents.json and LLM.txt files could be simple de-factos like robot.txt and I hope something takes off. CrewAI or Letta/MemGPT or OpenHands/OpenDevin all have some kind of swarm…
jimmySixDOF on HN
Simpler than alternatives
From 1 comment
This could be more simple, which is a good thing, well done! BTW I might have found a bug in the info property title in the spec: "MUST provide the title of the `agents.json`…
luke-stanley on HN
Objections
AGPL license blocks adoption
From 2 comments
AGPL is a great way to prevent people from adopting it.
cruffle_duffle on HNCool idea but seems to be dead on arrival due to licensing. Would love to have the team explain how anyone can possibly adopt their agpl package into their product.
bberenberg on HN
Unclear business model and who pays for the standard
From 2 comments
can’t an AI just take an OpenAPI spec and throw it into this standard? if it’s an open source standard, who’s paying for that?
dkdcwashere on HNI've been down this road - with OpenPlugin. It's all technically feasible - we did it successfully. The question is, so what? If the new models can zero-shot the API call and fix…
jeffrsch on HN
Docs hard to follow; no example agents.json visible
From 2 comments
This is interesting but why do you make it so hard to view the actual agents.json file? After clicking around in the registry (https://wild-card.ai/registry) for 10 minutes I…
melvinmelih on HNI've been following agents.json for a little while. I think it has legs, and would love to see some protocol win this space soon. Will be interesting to see where the state/less…
thomasfromcdnjs on HN
Providers must write the file; onboarding burden
From 1 comment
So,the api provider, like stripe, is supposed to publish a second API? And then the "end developer" who is going to be making a chatbot/agent, is supposed to use that to make a…
TZubiri on HN
Requests
Permissive license
From 2 comments
A couple people have mentioned some relevant things in this thread. This SDK isn't meant to be restrictive. This can be implemented into other open-source frameworks as a…
yompal on HNElastic License V2? https://www.elastic.co/licensing/elastic-license
Onawa on HN
Clearer docs and example schema
From 2 comments
I've been following agents.json for a little while. I think it has legs, and would love to see some protocol win this space soon. Will be interesting to see where the state/less…
thomasfromcdnjs on HNThis is interesting but why do you make it so hard to view the actual agents.json file? After clicking around in the registry (https://wild-card.ai/registry) for 10 minutes I…
melvinmelih on HN
Tool to generate agents.json from OpenAPI
From 1 comment
I've been following agents.json for a little while. I think it has legs, and would love to see some protocol win this space soon. Will be interesting to see where the state/less…
thomasfromcdnjs on HN
Questions
How it differs from MCP
From 3 comments
Looks cool! How is it similar/different from MCP?
sandinmyjoints on HNI like your approach but it's not clear to me whether it's MCP compatible Anthropic just announced a MCP registry
tsunego on HNPardon my ignorance , how is it different from MCP servers and having a supervisor agent selecting and executing the right MCP tool
linux_devil on HN
How it differs from Arazzo
From 1 comment
In what ways is the agents.json file different from an OpenAPI Arazzo specification? Is it more native for LLM use? Looking at the example, I'm seeing similar concepts between…
winkle on HN
Why not just use OpenAPI directly
From 1 comment
Can some help me understand why agents can't just use APIs documented by an openapi spec? Seems to work well in my own testing but I'm sure I'm missing something.
alooPotato on HN
Alternatives named
MCP
From 2 comments
Looks cool! How is it similar/different from MCP?
sandinmyjoints on HNHmm but the OpenAPI MVP server just exposes the commands for each API it knows about to the agent - then the MCP server makes stateless API calls. Problem solved. MCP isn't…
Blahah on HN
OpenAPI-to-MCP servers
From 1 comment
Hmm but the OpenAPI MVP server just exposes the commands for each API it knows about to the agent - then the MCP server makes stateless API calls. Problem solved. MCP isn't…
Blahah on HN
Arazzo
From 1 comment
In what ways is the agents.json file different from an OpenAPI Arazzo specification? Is it more native for LLM use? Looking at the example, I'm seeing similar concepts between…
winkle on HN
llms.txt
From 1 comment
How does this compare to llms.txt? I think that’s also emerging as a sort of standard to let LLMs understand APIs. I guess agents.json does a better packaging/ structural…
sidhusmart on HN