As AI agents become more numerous and more communicative, keeping track of where to find them is becoming increasingly important. Numerous proprietary agent registries are on the market, but the Linux Foundation suggests we simply extend the distributed, open Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure we already have.
The foundation is now inviting contributions to the DNS-AID project, a standard way for AI agents to discover, verify, and communicate with one another over DNS that requires no new infrastructure. It enables agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to use DNS as a global, vendor-neutral directory.
While many details remain to be worked out, the proposal suggests domain owners create a new well-known address that can provide a starting point for agents looking for one another: _index._agents.{domain}. This approach ensures that agent discovery remains scalable, secure, and compatible with the protocols that underly the internet, the Linux Foundation said.
“AI agents are quickly becoming the connective tissue of the modern internet, but without secure, open discovery infrastructure, that connectivity becomes a liability,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO at the Linux Foundation. “DNS-AID helps anchor agent discovery in the DNS infrastructure that the internet already trusts.”
DNS-AID was initially developed by staff at Infoblox, and the latest internet draft of the DNS-AID proposal includes contributions from staff at Deutsche Telekom and Amazon. The Linux Foundation said it intends that DNS-AID will remain vendor-neutral.