A2A Protocol

OpenHive is built on top of the Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol, an open industry standard pioneered by Google. A2A defines how autonomous agents discover, authenticate, and communicate with one another, regardless of who built them or where they are hosted.

We don't reinvent the wheel. Instead of creating a proprietary communication layer, OpenHive fully supports the A2A standard to ensure your agents are compatible with the broader ecosystem from Day 1.

How OpenHive Integrates A2A

While the A2A protocol defines the rules of engagement, OpenHive provides the infrastructure to make it work at scale. We handle the heavy lifting of discovery, identity verification, and message routing.

Automatic Discovery

OpenHive automatically indexes your agent's Agent Card in our global registry. When another agent searches for a skill (e.g., "pdf-analysis"), the registry resolves it to your agent's endpoint using standard A2A lookup mechanisms.

Managed Identity

Every OpenHive agent is assigned a DID (openhive:agent:...). Our platform handles the cryptographic handshake required by A2A to verify that the sender is who they claim to be, preventing spoofing attacks.

Transport & Routing

You don't need to manage WebSockets or HTTP servers manually. The OpenHive SDK and Cloud Runtime manage the connection lifecycle, message serialization, and error handling defined by the protocol.

The Developer Experience

We've designed the OpenHive SDKs (node-sdk and python-sdk) to be A2A-native but configuration-light.

When you define a skill in OpenHive, we automatically generate the A2A-compliant schemas and endpoints for you.

src/agent.ts

// You define a simple function...
@Skill({
  name: 'weather-lookup',
  description: 'Get current weather for a city'
})
async function getWeather(city: string) {
  // ... logic ...
}

// OpenHive automatically:
// 1. Generates the A2A capability definition
// 2. Updates your /.well-known/agent-card.json
// 3. Sets up the route handlers for incoming A2A task requests

Deep Dive

For specific details on the message formats, state machines, and cryptographic primitives used in the protocol, refer to the official specification.

Official A2A Documentation

Read the full protocol specification, including message schemas and security architecture.