How AI agents from different vendors discover each other and work together on the same task.
AI agents are getting good at individual tasks. But real work often requires specialists working together—and agents built with different frameworks can't talk to each other without expensive custom glue code. Google created A2A in April 2025 to fix this.
Each agent is an island. Your LangChain agent can't talk to a CrewAI agent or an AutoGen agent. Need them to collaborate? Build custom integration code for every pair.
IBM's VP Armand Ruiz called this "costly duct tape" between disparate systems. Every new agent you add multiplies the glue code you need to write and maintain.
Every agent pair needs its own custom integration. It doesn't scale.
Agents publish "Agent Cards"—like business cards that describe what they can do, how to reach them, and what authentication they need. Any agent can discover, contact, and delegate tasks to any other agent.
Structured task handoffs, real-time status updates, and secure communication—all through one standard protocol that every agent speaks.
One standard. Every agent speaks the same language.
/.well-known/agent-card.json) describing its skills, endpoint, and auth requirements.working, input-required, completed—so the client always knows where things stand.A2A shines when you need multiple specialized agents coordinating on complex workflows. Here's where it makes the biggest difference.
A front-line support agent handles basic questions. When it hits something complex, it hands off to a specialist agent—billing, technical, or account management—with full context preserved.
Google demonstrated a hiring pipeline where a primary agent delegates to sourcing, scheduling, and background-check agents. Each specialist does its part, reports back, and the primary orchestrates the whole process.
A research coordinator agent breaks a complex question into parts, delegating literature search to one agent, data analysis to another, and synthesis to a third. Each specialist contributes its expertise.
ServiceNow uses A2A in their AI Agent Control Tower, letting agents from different departments—IT, HR, finance—collaborate on cross-functional requests without manual handoffs.
A deployment agent discovers issues, delegates diagnosis to a monitoring agent, gets fix recommendations from an analysis agent, and coordinates the rollback—all through A2A.
Inventory agents, logistics agents, and procurement agents from different vendors coordinate through A2A to optimize ordering, shipping, and stock levels across the supply chain.
Multi-agent systems deliver 45% faster problem resolution and 60% higher accuracy on complex tasks—but only if agents can coordinate without custom plumbing for every pair.
A2A is backed by over 100 companies including Google, Microsoft, AWS, IBM, Salesforce, and SAP. In September 2025, IBM merged their competing Agent Communication Protocol (ACP) into A2A, consolidating the industry around one standard. Early adopters like PayPal are already using it in production.
Think of it like international trade agreements for AI. Without A2A, every pair of agents needs a bilateral deal. With A2A, everyone follows one set of rules and commerce flows freely.
A2A complements MCP perfectly—MCP handles how agents talk to tools (vertical), while A2A handles how agents talk to each other (horizontal). Together, they form a complete stack for agentic AI.
A2A lets agents from any vendor discover each other and collaborate on tasks without exposing their internal architecture. You get the best agent for each job, working together through a universal protocol.
Every A2A agent publishes an Agent Card—a JSON file that tells other agents what it can do and how to reach it:
{
"name": "Research Assistant",
"description": "Searches academic databases and summarizes papers",
"url": "https://agent.example.com/a2a",
"version": "1.0.0",
"authentication": {
"schemes": ["OAuth2"],
"credentials": "Bearer token required"
},
"skills": [
{
"name": "literature_search",
"description": "Search and summarize academic papers",
"inputSchema": {
"type": "object",
"properties": {
"query": { "type": "string" }
}
}
}
],
"capabilities": {
"streaming": true,
"pushNotifications": true
}
}
Any agent that discovers this card can send it a task. The research agent accepts, works on it, and streams back results—all through the standard A2A protocol.