Agent Network for Open Multi-Agent Collaboration with Shared Cognition

The history of information infrastructure can be read as a history of connectivity. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) made heterogeneous hosts reachable and the World Wide Web made documents linkable. A new connectivity problem is now emerging: The object to be connected is a capability-bearing agent that can perceive, reason, invoke tools, or act in the physical world. However, these capabilities remain locked inside platforms, organizations, and runtimes, while existing frameworks, interface protocols, and agent-interconnection efforts still leave open the question of what stable public abstraction can connect agents, humans, and infrastructure as a network architecture problem across organizational and physical domains. This vision and position paper argues for agent network: A reference architecture for capability discovery, connection, and coordination among heterogeneous, autonomous, and potentially self-interested agents. We do not present a complete protocol specification or a performance evaluation. Its central position is that open agent networks need a dual narrow-waist architecture. The Agent Locator Protocol (ALP), surfaced through agent://<name>, provides the connectivity waist for making capability-bearing participants globally locatable, reachable, and minimally deliverable across substrates and organizations. The Task Semantic Intermediate Representation (TSIR) protocol provides the semantic waist for circulating task intent and success criteria as signable and reusable objects. Around two waists, we propose the Agent Shared Cognition Protocol (ASCP) as a candidate coordination runtime for adjustable group cognition, with blackboard-like workspaces and sedimentation as reference mechanisms for shared working state and experience reuse. Together, these abstractions define Networked Intent Realization (NIR): A research agenda for preserving high-level intent, routing it to capable participants, and translating it into executable, traceable, and accountable collaboration across open agent networks.