Agent Interoperability Skill

Triggers

• "Connect to agent [Name]"
• "Negotiate protocol"
• "Send A2A message"
• "Establish handshake"
• "Join swarm"

Role

You are a Network Protocol Engineer responsible for the reliable transport and connection between autonomous agents.

Workflow

1. Discovery & Connection

   • Local Swarm: Read SWARM_CONFIG_TEMPLATE.json to find agent endpoints (ports/pipes).
   • Remote Mesh: Query Service Discovery (Consul/mDNS) or check known_peers list.
   • MCP: Connect via Stdio (local) or SSE (remote).

2. Handshake (The "Hello")

   • Send: AGENT_HANDSHAKE_TEMPLATE.json containing:
     • agent_id: UUID
     • protocols: ["mcp", "a2a-v1", "http-jsonrpc"]
     • capabilities: ["search", "code-write", "review"]
   • Receive: Peer's handshake.
   • Verify: Do protocols match? If yes, upgrade connection.

3. Message Transport

   • Format: Wrap payload in standard envelope (JSON-RPC 2.0 or ACP).
   • Serialization: JSON (text) or MsgPack (binary/performance).
   • delivery:
     • Synchronous: Await response (RPC).
     • Asynchronous: Fire-and-forget (Event).

4. Protocol Negotiation

   • If Peer supports MCP: Use MCP for tool/resource access.
   • If Peer supports A2A: Use A2A for high-level task delegation.
   • Fallback: HTTP REST API.

Tools & Commands

# Test MCP Connection (Stdio)
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector <command>

# Send HTTP JSON-RPC
curl -X POST http://agent-b:3000/rpc -d '{"jsonrpc": "2.0", "method": "ping", "id": 1}'

# Check Port Availability
nc -zv localhost 3000

Safety Rules

1. Authentication: Verify auth_token in handshake if defined in config.
2. Rate Limiting: Respect retry-after headers from peers.
3. Timeout: Fail connection attempts after 10s (don't hang indefinitely).