The idea that there should be one standard way to find an AI agent from a name has gone from proposal to approved work. On 22 October 2026 the IETF's steering group (the body that decides which working groups the internet-standards organisation opens) approved the charter of DAWN, Discovery of Agents With Names, and the group is now listed as active. It will standardise only the first lookup, and real output is at least a year away. Watch, and do not wait for it.
What happened
The charter history shows the state changing to Approved on 22 October, with the entry "IESG has approved the charter" and charter version 01 posted the same day. The route took longer than first planned. A first ballot for community review closed on 30 September, when the responsible Area Director, Éric Vyncke, noted that the text "has changed a lot since the first ballot". An approval ballot was created on 9 October, and the steering group's meeting moved from 8 October to 22 October. Vyncke also added a milestone that day: an optional use-cases and applicability document sent to the steering group for publication, due in June 2027.
What it will do, and not do
The charter keeps the scope narrow. Discovery here is "limited to a client requesting and obtaining the minimum public discovery information" for an AI resource, which means what it is, how to reach it and which protocol it speaks. DNS (the internet's naming system) and mDNS (naming on a local network) are the starting mechanisms to build on, and the exchanged information must be protected against tampering. Three settings are in view: devices nearby, agents within an organisation, and cooperating parties across the public internet.
Left out of the first phase: capability catalogues, any communication after the first lookup, indexing and searching AI resources across the internet, identity management for agents, tools and skills, and trust evaluation beyond a secure exchange between the parties. The charter lists coordination with the groups working on workload identity, OAuth, DNS service discovery and the agent-dialog group, AGENTPROTO.
How long it will take
The charter page shows one dated milestone, the optional June 2027 document, and none for the protocol itself. Chartering is the beginning: the group still has to adopt documents, argue them through and publish them. My estimate, from how IETF work normally goes, is that a finished protocol is at least a year away.
What to do
Watch. If you build agent discovery now, expect DNS to be the likely foundation, and expect the standard to cover only the first lookup. Re-check when the group adopts its first document.