Agents Charter

community/working-groups/agents First recorded · 143 lines, first recorded

# Agents Charter ## Group Type ## Mission Statement ## Scope ### In Scope ### Out of Scope ### Related Groups ## Leadership ## Authority & Decision Rights ## Membership ## Operations ## Resources ## Deliverables & Success Metrics ### Active Work Items ### Success Criteria ## Changelog

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# Agents Charter

> Charter for the MCP Agents Working Group.

## Group Type

**Working Group**

## Mission Statement

The Agents Working Group exists to make interactions with agent-backed systems
interoperable over MCP. Today, these systems are typically exposed as ordinary
tools or through framework-specific integrations, leaving durable execution,
capability discovery, delegation, and multi-turn interaction to ad hoc conventions.
The WG stewards Tasks as MCP's foundation for durable asynchronous execution and
evaluates which remaining gaps require protocol support. Based on production use
cases and prototypes, the group will either evolve Tasks, introduce an Agents
Extension that complements it, or document how existing MCP primitives should be
used consistently.

## Scope

### In Scope

* **Tasks**: Stabilization of the
  [`io.modelcontextprotocol/tasks`](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/pull/2663)
  extension and its promotion into the core MCP protocol, including collecting
  implementation feedback, resolving ambiguities, and evaluating proposed changes
  to its lifecycle.
* **Agents Extension Evaluation**: Evaluate agent-backed MCP use cases, including
  agent-as-tool, remote-agent, and supervisor/sub-agent patterns, to determine
  whether an Agents Extension is needed to complement Tasks.
* **Prototypes and Proposals**: Develop narrowly scoped proofs of concept where they
  help determine whether to introduce an Agents Extension, evolve Tasks, or rely on
  existing MCP primitives.
* **Implementation Coordination**: Coordinate with SDK and conformance maintainers
  on implementation feedback, examples, and coverage for specifications owned by
  the group.
* **Cross-Cutting Concerns**: Coordinate with relevant groups when Tasks or
  evaluated agent use cases raise transport, events, skills, authorization,
  metadata, or external-interoperability questions.
* **Documentation**: Maintain the Tasks specification and document agent-backed MCP
  use cases, findings, and any proposals adopted by the group.

### Out of Scope

* Building or standardizing general-purpose agent frameworks and runtimes, including
  internal choices about planning, memory, model selection, and orchestration. The
  group standardizes behavior at MCP interoperability boundaries rather than host or
  server implementation internals.
* Transport wire formats and session mechanics, which are owned by the Transports WG.
* General event delivery and callback mechanisms, which are owned by the Triggers and
  Events WG.

The charter does not predetermine where inference or agent loops run, or whether a
particular capability belongs in Tasks, an Agents Extension, or existing MCP
primitives. The WG evaluates those questions through its design work.

### Related Groups

* **[Transports WG](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/transports-wg)** -
  Task polling, multi-round-trip requests, stateless operation, and request
  association depend on transport and message-flow semantics.
* **[Triggers and Events WG](/community/working-groups/triggers-events)** -
  Proactive task-status and completion notifications are event-delivery concerns
  owned by that group.

## Leadership

| Role | Name             | Organization        | GitHub                                             | Term    |
| ---- | ---------------- | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------- |
| Lead | Luca Chang       | Amazon Web Services | [@LucaButBoring](https://github.com/LucaButBoring) | Initial |
| Lead | Caitie McCaffrey | Microsoft           | [@CaitieM20](https://github.com/CaitieM20)         | Initial |

## Authority & Decision Rights

| Decision Type                       | Authority Level                                        |
| ----------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| Meeting logistics & scheduling      | WG Leads (autonomous)                                  |
| Proposal prioritization within WG   | WG Leads (autonomous)                                  |
| SEP triage & closure (in scope)     | WG Leads (autonomous, with documented rationale)       |
| Technical design within scope       | WG consensus                                           |
| Spec changes (additive)             | WG consensus → Core Maintainer approval                |
| Spec changes (breaking/fundamental) | WG consensus → Core Maintainer approval + wider review |
| Scope expansion                     | Core Maintainer approval required                      |
| WG Member approval                  | WG Member sponsors                                     |

## Membership

| Name             | Organization        | GitHub                                             | Discord | Level |
| ---------------- | ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- | ------- | ----- |
| Luca Chang       | Amazon Web Services | [@LucaButBoring](https://github.com/LucaButBoring) |         | Lead  |
| Caitie McCaffrey | Microsoft           | [@CaitieM20](https://github.com/CaitieM20)         |         | Lead  |

## Operations

| Meeting         | Frequency | Duration   | Purpose                                             |
| --------------- | --------- | ---------- | --------------------------------------------------- |
| Working Session | Weekly    | 30 minutes | Technical discussion, research, and proposal review |

Meetings are published at
[meet.modelcontextprotocol.io](https://meet.modelcontextprotocol.io).

Discord: `#agents-wg`

## Resources

* Working group repository:
  [modelcontextprotocol/agents-wg](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/agents-wg)
* Tasks extension repository:
  [modelcontextprotocol/ext-tasks](https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/ext-tasks)
* Tasks specification:
  [SEP-2663: Tasks Extension](/seps/2663-tasks-extension)

## Deliverables & Success Metrics

### Active Work Items

| Item                                            | Status      | Target Date | Champion                                                                                       |
| ----------------------------------------------- | ----------- | ----------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tasks stabilization and core protocol promotion | In Progress |             | [@LucaButBoring](https://github.com/LucaButBoring)                                             |
| Agents Extension evaluation and recommendation  | In Progress |             | TBD                                                                                            |
| Two-level agent definition proof of concept     | In Progress |             | [@LucaButBoring](https://github.com/LucaButBoring), [@madhaviai](https://github.com/madhaviai) |

### Success Criteria

* Tasks is fully stabilized based on implementation feedback and promoted from an
  extension into the core MCP protocol.
* Lifecycle ambiguities and conformance gaps that block Tasks stabilization are
  resolved or explicitly dispositioned.
* The group publishes an evaluation of whether an Agents Extension is needed to
  complement Tasks, supported by documented use cases and relevant prototype
  evidence.
* Based on that evaluation, the group either evolves Tasks, proposes an Agents
  Extension, or documents how existing MCP primitives are sufficient.
* Proposed agent protocol surface is evaluated through prototypes and
  implementation feedback before being advanced.

## Changelog

| Date       | Change          |
| ---------- | --------------- |
| 2026-08-04 | Initial charter |