What happened
On 24 August 2026 AWS introduced Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), an open specification for agent discovery.
It pairs with AWS Agent Registry, a centralised searchable catalog of agents, tools and skills, together enabling cross-environment discovery and governance at scale.
Why it matters
Once an organisation has many agents, the hard question stops being how to build one and becomes which ones already exist, who uses them, and whether they can be found. A registry plus a discovery protocol addresses that layer.
The 'open specification' framing is the load-bearing part: a registry without a spec makes cross-environment discovery a single-vendor capability.
Key facts
Specification: Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD), positioned as open.
Companion product: AWS Agent Registry.
Catalog contents: agents, tools, skills.
Purpose: cross-environment discovery and governance at scale.
Source: AWS Machine Learning blog, 24 August 2026.
What to watch next
Whether implementations appear outside AWS — the difference between an industry spec and a product feature.
How it relates to existing agent interoperability protocols.