The Pulse
Agent Name Service enters Linux Foundation governance
The Linux Foundation has made Agent Name Service an open-source project under its governance. The standard sets out how AI agents can be named, registered, verified and discovered using DNS.
AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked ·
A shared framework for agent identity
On Nov. 10, Agent Name Service (ANS), an open standard built on Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure, became a project under the foundation. The foundation describes ANS as a way to provide identity, verification and discovery for AI agents operating across the internet.
The specification sets out how agents are named and registered, how their identities are published through DNS, and how other parties can verify those identities. It also addresses monitoring identity records for unauthorized changes and enabling agents to verify one another.
The foundation says the framework is intended to let developers build systems that work across platforms and services. The complete specification is formalized and will be governed by the project's technical steering committee under the foundation.
Seven documents and early integrations
The specification consists of seven documents developed in the open by the technical steering committee. They cover domain-anchored naming, registration and versioning, DNS publication, public log auditing, integrity monitoring, and agent-to-agent authentication.
Two examples of tools using ANS identities are pointed to in the announcement. The AGNTCY Agent Directory Service, also a Linux Foundation project, supports verification of ANS identities; separately, ANS Finder implements the Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) specification and, the announcement says, passes its registry conformance tests.
These are early adoption and show progress toward making verifiable agent identities work across different systems, the release says. Neither service is described as the standard itself: the specification defines the identity processes, while the named tools support verification or discovery, the release says.
Organizations backing the project
11 organizations have contributed to or adopted ANS since the project's intent to launch was announced in June. The organizations listed are Cisco, Cloudflare, DigiCert, DistributedApps.ai, GoDaddy, HOL, Infoblox, Radix, Salesforce, OWASP and Trustmodel.ai.
ANS is already being adopted across a range of projects, showing how agents can be discovered and verified beyond any single proprietary platform, GoDaddy Chief Strategy and Legal Officer Jared Sine said. He described that activity as evidence of momentum for an open agent internet.
ANS uses DNS infrastructure already relied on by the internet, rather than creating another proprietary system, Cloudflare Chief Technology Officer Dane Knecht said. Organizations need to verify an agent before giving it access to systems or data, DigiCert Senior Vice President of Product Management Brian Trzupek said, describing ANS as bringing DNS and certificate-based identity together.
Specification and code
The project is governed under the foundation's neutral oversight, with the technical steering committee responsible for the specification's development. The standard describes both how an agent's identity can be checked and how identity records can be monitored for unauthorized changes.
The project directs developers and others to its GitHub repository to read the specification, run the open-source code or contribute. The foundation also directs readers to ANS's information site for more details about the standard.