AI agents get their own phone directory built atop DNS
Jump to main content
REG AD
AI + ML
AI agents get their own phone directory built atop DNS DNS-AID, under the auspices of the Linux Foundation, promises easier agent discovery
Thomas Claburn Thomas Claburn
Senior reporter
Published thu 28 May 2026 // 14:06 UTC
In the future, AI agents will be able to find one another using the Domain Name System (DNS), instead of crawling about and probing ports or checking configured resources.That future begins now with DNS for AI Discovery (DNS-AID), an open source project intended to facilitate agent-to-agent discovery using existing internet infrastructure. The system has been built atop DNS to avoid the creation of yet another registry that has the potential to become a competitive chokepoint."Current approaches to agent connectivity are fragmented and often rely on fragile, hardcoded configurations,” said Ingmar Van Glabbeek, project maintainer for DNS-AID, in a statement. "With DNS-AID, we are moving toward a 'web-native' model for AI. By utilizing the existing DNS hierarchy, we enable developers to publish and discover agents with the same reliability and ubiquity that we’ve used to navigate the internet for decades."
REG AD
DNS already provides various capabilities beyond domain name resolution. For example, websites expose their DMARC, SPF, and DKIM records via DNS TXT entries. And more recently, Service Binding (SVCB) and HTTPS RR (HTTPS Resource Records) were adopted to make it easier for clients to discover services and associated parameters.
REG AD
DNS-AID utilizes SVCB (with TXT as a fallback) and optionally DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) and DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) TLSA records. These provide agents with a way to connect without a mediating entity, additional infrastructure, or a preferred protocol. DNS-AID supports MCP, A2A, HTTPS, and anything addressable via SVCB and ALPN. MORE CONTEXT Snowflake to burn $6B on AWS Graviton CPUs and AI accelerators
FAA grounds SpaceX’s Starship after another launch mishap
Malware dev tries to steal Claude users' secrets, writes npm slop, leaks own GitHub private token
Argonne flexes spare supercompute to build private AI inference service
The system allows agents to be searched by name, by function, and by domain.The Linux Foundation promises vendor-neutral governance for the project, which was initially developed by Infoblox."The Internet already solved the discovery problem decades ago with DNS – it's fast, it scales globally, and every network on earth understands it," said Dane Knecht, CTO of Cloudflare, in a statement. "By extending this proven architecture to the agentic web, DNS-AID provides the foundational routing layer that autonomous systems need to operate safely and efficiently."There are various ways to get started, the simplest of which is to install dns-aid and then issue the command dns-aid init. There is already a Python SDK, and presumably it won't be long before other languages have a reference implementation.The setup process involves publishing an SVCB record for your agent to your site's DNS zone and signing the zone with DNSSEC as a verification of provenance. Thereafter, attempts to resolve the agent record _{agent-name}._{protocol}._agents.{your-domain} will return the relevant details, which can then be verified via DNSSEC, optional JWS signatures, and DANE policy before agents connect to one another.Several DNS providers currently offer DNS-AID support, including AWS Route 53, Azure DNS, Cloudflare, Google Cloud DNS, Infoblox NIOS and UDDI, NS1, and any standards-compliant DNS service (RFC 2136 DDNS). Developers experimenting locally have the option to use a Docker BIND9 playground.Global consultancy McKinsey argues that agent-to-agent commerce could be meaningful someday, calling it a "projected $3 trillion to $5 trillion economic opportunity." We note that McKinsey's 1980s prediction about the size of the mobile phone market in 2000 was off by about 100x. ®
cloudflare ai agents ai + ml ai linux foundation domain name system dns-aid
REG AD
public sector
ICE to keep an eye on your eyes under $25M biometric scanner deal
And you thought a face recognition app was intrusive?
Security
No fix yet for critical RCE bug in open-source Git service Gogs - exploit module is out
Researcher reported the vuln in March. Maintainers haven't responded to his messages since
PARTNER CONTENT
AI and data sovereignty in Postgres: An answer to the datacenter energy crisis
A billion AI agents walk into a power grid
Legal
23andMe inherits lawsuit over 'disturbing' DNA data breach
California AG claims genetics biz downplayed 2023 mega-leak while paying ransom to attacker
Systems
EU's digital sovereignty boo-boo may be the best thing to ever happen to the project
DIY or die. Just don't let the CIA buy it
software
UCLA seeks pre-litigation resolution with Oracle
Discussion understood to concern delayed SaaS transformation project
MOST POPULAR
AI + ML Google has seriously leaned into AI enshittification lately Security Anthropic to release Mythos-class models to the public Security Di