# What Is Agentic Resource Discovery?

Updated: 2026-06-30

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## Short Definition

Agentic Resource Discovery, or ARD, is Google's June 17, 2026 open specification for publishing, discovering, and verifying tools, skills, MCP servers, A2A agents, and other AI capabilities across the web.

It uses domain-hosted catalogs plus searchable registries so agents can find the right capability and check who published it before connecting.

## Why This Matters Now

AI agent stacks are becoming more distributed across teams, vendors, and protocols.

That makes discovery and trust a real operational problem, not just a documentation problem.

## How ARD Works

- Providers publish an `ai-catalog.json` file on their own domain.
- Registries crawl and index those catalogs.
- Agents search registries to discover relevant capabilities.
- After discovery, the agent connects through the capability's existing protocol or API.

## What ARD Is Good For

- Decentralized discovery across organizations.
- Publishing internal, partner, or public agent capabilities under a domain you control.
- Finding MCP servers, A2A services, tools, and skills without hard-coding every endpoint.

## What ARD Does Not Solve

- It does not guarantee quality.
- It does not replace permissions or governance.
- It does not replace MCP, A2A, or OpenAPI.

ARD is a discovery and verification layer, not a universal runtime.

## Real Questions Teams Ask

### What is Agentic Resource Discovery?

It is Google's open specification for publishing, discovering, and verifying AI capabilities across the web.

### Why not just use API docs?

Because API docs do not provide a shared cross-organization discovery layer with trust metadata and searchable registries.

### What are the key building blocks?

Catalogs and registries. Providers publish catalogs, and registries index them for search and resolution.

### Does ARD replace MCP or A2A?

No. It helps an agent find and trust a capability, then hands off to that capability's native protocol or API.

### Who should care first?

Platform teams, integration-heavy product teams, agent builders, and enterprises exposing capabilities to multiple agents.

### What is the biggest evaluation mistake?

Thinking discovery automatically solves governance and quality. It does not.

## 中文速览

ARD 解决的是“怎么发现并验证 AI 能力”，不是“怎么替代所有协议”。

它更像一个发现层和信任层，适合多团队、多供应商、多协议的 agent 生态。

## Source URLs

- Google Developers Blog: Announcing the Agentic Resource Discovery specification: https://developers.googleblog.com/announcing-the-agentic-resource-discovery-specification/
- Agentic Resource Discovery quickstart: https://agenticresourcediscovery.org/
- Google Developers Blog: How A2A is Building a World of Collaborative Agents: https://developers.googleblog.com/how-a2a-is-building-a-world-of-collaborative-agents/
- Google Developers Blog: Build Cross-Language Multi-Agent Team with Google's Agent Development Kit and A2A: https://developers.googleblog.com/build-cross-language-multi-agent-team-with-google-agent-development-kit-and-a2a/