Agent card

core-agent can publish a /.well-known/agent-card.json descriptor from its attach-mode listener so external discovery systems — most notably Google Cloud Agent Registry — can index the binary’s name, description, and skills without a parallel registration channel. The endpoint is opt-in: a binary built without the card config behaves exactly like today’s binary plus a card-shaped 404 at the well-known path.

The card is discovery metadata, not a transport promise. core-agent does not speak the A2A JSON-RPC transport — the url field on the card points at the attach listener, and an A2A client that POSTs JSON-RPC at it gets a 404. GCP Agent Registry, the actual consumer of this endpoint, only reads the card; it never drives the URL as A2A. If you need a non-A2A-shaped registration, GCP also supports NO_SPEC which doesn’t require a card at all — see the Agent Registry register-agents docs.

Enabling the endpoint

Four layers, applied in order: .agents/config.json’s agent.description → .agents/agent-card.json on disk → CLI flag overrides → library API for embedders. The endpoint registers as soon as description is set from any layer.

.agents/config.json’s agent.description is the recommended source — set it once and it flows to both the card AND the ADK system prompt (via agent.WithDescription). The card-only layers (.agents/agent-card.json description field, --agent-card-description flag) override just the card, not the LLM system prompt — use them when the public-facing wording should differ from what you tell the model.

The card’s url field is derived per-request from the caller’s Host header (with X-Forwarded-Proto / X-Forwarded-Host taking precedence behind ingress) — the operator never has to know their own external address. By definition, the consumer fetching /.well-known/agent-card.json already knows the URL they used; the handler just echoes it back. Same convention as OIDC discovery and most other well-known endpoints. Set external_url only when you want to publish a canonical URL different from the fetch URL (rare — typically when serving on multiple addresses but wanting one canonical answer).

.agents/agent-card.json (recommended)

Lives next to .agents/config.json and .agents/mcp.json (same version: 1 envelope). Gets checked into the repo with the .agents/skills/ bundles it describes:

{
  "version": 1,
  "name":            "core-agent",
  "description":     "Production-incident response agent for the platform fleet.",
  "agent_version":   "v2.2.0",
  "documentation_url": "https://example.internal/platform/runbooks/core-agent",
  "provider": {
    "organization": "Platform Team",
    "url":          "https://example.internal/platform"
  },
  "extra_skills": [
    {
      "id":          "rollback-deploy",
      "name":        "Rollback a deploy",
      "description": "Curated: revert a Cloud Deploy release to the previous revision.",
      "tags":        ["curated", "deploy"],
      "examples":    ["rollback the most recent payments-api release"]
    }
  ]
}

A missing file is not an error — the binary just runs without the card endpoint unless flags supply description. A file that only sets extra_skills (no description) is rejected: the card is the public-discovery surface, not a skill-library side-channel. external_url is optional; set it only to override the per-request URL with a canonical alternative.

CLI flags

Override individual fields. Useful when running under Cloud Run / Helm where mounting a file alongside the binary is awkward and per-pod values come in via env vars:

There is no flag for curated skills. Skill descriptions are multi-sentence and tags/examples are arrays — they live in the file (or the library API), reviewable in code review and versioned with the binary.

Library API

Embedders building their own daemon populate attach.Options.AgentCard directly:

srv, err := attach.NewServer(attach.Options{
    Registry: reg,
    Addr:     ":7777",
    AgentCard: attach.AgentCardConfig{
        Name:        "my-agent",
        Description: "Does the thing.",
        // ExternalURL omitted — handler derives url from each
        // request's Host / X-Forwarded-* headers.
        Provider:    attach.AgentCardProvider{Organization: "Acme", URL: "https://acme.example.com"},
        ExtraSkills: []attach.AgentCardSkill{
            {ID: "do-thing", Name: "Do the thing", Description: "Executes the thing."},
        },
    },
})

Where the skills come from

Two sources, merged. Curated wins on id collision:

1. Auto-derived from every .agents/skills/ bundle the binary loaded at startup (the same set surfaced through the in-TUI /skills view). Each gets tags: ["skill"] and lifts name / description from the SKILL.md frontmatter. Internal tools (report_done, MCP tools, the inbox primitives, etc.) are never auto-included — they’re implementation detail, not skills.
2. Curated extras from extra_skills in the file (or ExtraSkills in the library API). Default tags are ["curated"] if unset.

Newly-dropped SKILL.md bundles surface on the next card fetch without restart — the card handler re-reads the skills snapshot per request, same as GET /sessions/<id>/skills.

Auth and security

The card endpoint is always unauthenticated, even when the rest of the attach listener requires mTLS + bearer auth — public discoverability is the point. The card’s securitySchemes / security fields describe the auth required for other endpoints, so a discovery system can tell what credentials it would need to actually drive the agent:

Registering with Google Cloud Agent Registry

Once the card serves cleanly:

# Verify the card.
curl https://my-agent.example.com:7777/.well-known/agent-card.json | jq

# Register as A2A_AGENT_CARD (gets the skills indexed for keyword search).
gcloud alpha agent-registry agents create my-agent \
    --location=us-central1 \
    --agent-spec-url=https://my-agent.example.com:7777/.well-known/agent-card.json

The Registry fetches /.well-known/agent-card.json once at registration; subsequent operator searches hit the Registry’s index, not the binary. If your external_url is publicly resolvable, you’re done. If it lives behind a private VPC, see the Registry docs on setting up Private Service Connect for indexing reach.

Validation

The card builder validates every emission against the vendored A2A v0.3.0 JSON Schema (pkg/attach/testdata/agentcard.schema.json) in TestAgentCardSchemaValidation. The vendored file gets bumped in a dedicated commit each time the A2A spec issues a minor-version bump — see pkg/attach/testdata/AGENTCARD_SCHEMA_NOTICE.md for the refresh policy.

Design background

See docs/agent-card-design.md for the rationale and trade-offs. Future work — full A2A JSON-RPC transport (attach/a2a.go) — stays deferred per docs/attach-mode-design.md until a concrete consumer surfaces.