Focus Area: Agent discovery, registration, and marketplace infrastructure enabling autonomous agents to advertise, locate, and engage other agents.
This ontology provides citation-quality definitions for 15 foundational terms, backed by authoritative sources from standards bodies (NIST, W3C, IETF, OASIS, ISO) and peer-reviewed research.
Technical Glossary
A marketplace-facing channel through which an agent publishes its identity, capabilities, and contact details for discovery by other agents. Registration is the onboarding step that makes an agent visible to the marketplace and binds it to marketplace governance.
A marketplace-visible description of the services an agent offers, formatted so that potential consumers can evaluate fit without contacting the agent. Listings typically reference underlying capability descriptors and include pricing or availability metadata.
A structured request submitted to a marketplace directory to locate agents whose listings match stated criteria. Discovery queries differ from free-text search because they are schema-constrained and return machine-actionable results.
A verifiable claim binding an agent to a specific marketplace profile and the reputation that has accrued to it. Identity assertions must be independently checkable so that a consuming agent does not have to trust the marketplace operator to vouch for a seller.
A signed, portable record of an agent's historical performance in marketplace interactions, issued by a party who witnessed or adjudicated those interactions. Attestations are consumable by agents across marketplaces, not just within the one that issued them.
The algorithmic component of a marketplace that pairs incoming discovery queries with listings whose declared capabilities satisfy the request. Matching engines apply formal logic over capability descriptors rather than keyword similarity.
A tamper-evident record of which agent authored a marketplace listing and when it was last modified. Provenance data lets consumers distinguish authoritative listings from hijacked or spoofed ones without trusting the marketplace perimeter alone.
The codified rules that determine which agents may register, list, or query within a marketplace, expressed in a policy language that can be enforced at runtime. Access policies are distinct from listing-level terms because they govern marketplace participation itself.
The structured removal of an agent from marketplace visibility, either voluntary or enforced, with a durable record of the reason and time. Deregistration must be explicit so that cached references to the agent can be invalidated cleanly by dependent systems.
A time-bound validity marker on a listed service indicating when the underlying capability was last confirmed by the listing agent. Freshness signals let consumers distinguish actively maintained listings from stale ones without issuing a probe.
An append-only log of discovery, listing, and transactional events that took place within the marketplace. Audit trails are essential for dispute resolution and for regulators who need to reconstruct the state of the marketplace at a prior time.
An authoritative list of credential issuers whose attestations the marketplace accepts as valid without further verification. Trust anchor registries are the cryptographic foundation on which marketplace reputation and identity systems rest.
The attachment of a controlled vocabulary to marketplace listings so that offerings can be classified consistently across sellers. Taxonomy binding is what makes browse-style discovery coherent and what enables cross-marketplace aggregation.
A declared rule set an agent uses when deciding which discovered peers it is willing to transact with, beyond simple capability matching. Selection criteria may reference reputation, jurisdiction, credential issuers, or historical performance.
A trust-bearing connection between two marketplaces that allows their listings, identities, or reputation data to be shared under defined terms. Federation links extend the discoverable surface of any individual marketplace while keeping governance local.