IntentMesh does not compete with the open agent standards — it sits on top of them. Each standard below moves some part of the transaction. IntentMesh adds the accountability layer none of them own: consent, a verifiable record, a trust register, and settlement. Adopt it without leaving any of them.
| Standard | What it is | What it does | What IntentMesh adds |
|---|---|---|---|
MCP | Model Context Protocol Anthropic, open | Connects an agent to tools, data, and context through a uniform interface. | A record of which tools an agent was authorized to reach, sealed to the result of using them. |
A2A | Agent2Agent Linux Foundation project | Lets agents from different vendors and organizations discover and message each other. | The accountable layer above A2A: who authorized the agent, human consent at the boundary, and a verifiable record of the exchange. |
IAIP | Intent-based Agent Interconnect IETF draft | Routes an intent between agents so the right capability receives it. | Consented intent routing with a human in the loop — the intent is a proposal until a person at the other org signs. |
AIDIP | Agent Discovery & Interconnect IETF draft | Lets an agent discover other agents and the capabilities they expose. | A trust register a stranger relies on — discovery answers “who,” the register answers “can I trust them,” and can answer no. |
AP2 | Agent Payments Protocol open payments standard | Carries payment intents and authorizations along agent-to-agent rails. | Settlement sealed to the record: the payment and the proof of what it settled are one entry, on an open, forkable ledger. |
The agent economy does not need a fifth way for agents to talk, discover, route, or pay — those problems have good open answers already, and a closed protocol with one implementer is a product, not a standard. What it lacks is a layer where the exchange becomes accountable: where consent is a human signature at the other org, where the record recomputes from a published document, and where a stranger can look up whether an agent was ever authorized to act.
That is a layer, not a competitor. IntentMesh reads the standards below and writes an accountable record over them — and the formats it uses to do so are themselves open. See the open wire formats and the conformance register.
Walk the mechanism end to end — intent ⋈ capability, consented, sealed, settled.
How IntentMesh works →