Linux Foundation launches Agent Name Service for AI

The Linux Foundation has added Agent Name Service as a new project. The standard is designed to give AI agents a verifiable identity and a way to be discovered online.

Agent Name Service, or ANS, uses the Domain Name System infrastructure already used across the internet. The specification sets out how AI agents are named and registered, how their identities are published through DNS and verified, how identity records are monitored for unauthorised changes, and how agents authenticate one another.

The specification is now being developed openly under the oversight of the project's technical steering committee. It consists of seven documents covering domain-anchored naming, registration and versioning, DNS publication, public log auditing, integrity monitoring, and agent-to-agent authentication.

Jim Zemlin, chief executive officer of the Linux Foundation, said the project addresses a basic issue for autonomous software operating across different networks and services. “Autonomous AI agents are transacting and operating across global systems, but they can't succeed without verifiable identity,” Zemlin said.

“Under the neutral governance of the Linux Foundation, ANS provides a common foundation for trust that the entire industry can adopt, implement and improve together,” he added.

Early support

Eleven organisations have contributed to or adopted the standard so far. They include Cisco, Cloudflare, DigiCert, DistributedApps.ai, GoDaddy, HOL, Infoblox, Radix, Salesforce, OWASP, and Trustmodel.ai.

Some related services already use ANS identities. The AGNTCY Agent Directory Service, another Linux Foundation project, supports verification of ANS identities, while ANS Finder implements the Agentic Resource Discovery specification and has passed registry conformance tests.

This places ANS within a broader effort to create a common way for AI agents to identify themselves and be found across different systems, rather than through isolated vendor-specific approaches. Backers argue that internet-scale use of autonomous agents will depend on a shared trust model.

Jared Sine, chief strategy and legal officer at GoDaddy, linked the standard to wider questions about open internet infrastructure. “Agent identity is essential to building trust in the agentic open internet, and open standards lay the foundation for ensuring it stays open,” Sine said.

“Agent Name Service is core to both, and we're already seeing ANS adopted across a range of projects, showing how agents can be discovered and verified beyond any single proprietary platform. That momentum is an exciting tailwind for bringing the agentic open internet to life, and we're grateful to the Linux Foundation and the growing community of contributors helping turn a shared standard into practical infrastructure for an agentic open web,” he added.

Identity model

The technical approach behind ANS draws on existing internet systems rather than introducing a separate naming layer. Supporters say that matters because DNS and certificate-based verification are already widely deployed, well understood, and tied to established internet governance and security practices.

Cloudflare framed the issue around trust and interoperability. “Recent high-profile security incidents involving AI agents have reinforced a fundamental requirement for the agentic web: organizations need to know who an agent represents before trusting it to act. ANS builds on DNS to help answer that question using infrastructure the internet already relies on, rather than creating another proprietary system. At Cloudflare, we believe open standards are essential to making the agentic web both trustworthy and interoperable,” said Dane Knecht, chief technology officer at Cloudflare.

DigiCert also pointed to the need for identity checks before agents are given access to systems or data. “Before an organization gives an AI agent access to its systems or data, it needs to verify that agent's identity. Think of it as a passport for AI agents, which is a concept ANS helps advance across platforms and organizational boundaries by bringing together DNS and certificate-based identity. DigiCert supports this open approach as part of a broader enterprise imperative of knowing which agents are operating, controlling what they can do, and having the ability to revoke their access when trust changes,” said Brian Trzupek, senior vice president of product management at DigiCert.

Governance focus

Several backers highlighted the decision to place the specification under the Linux Foundation rather than leave it with a single commercial sponsor. For supporters, that governance model is meant to reassure users that the naming and verification system will remain open to multiple participants.

Ken Huang, chief executive officer of DistributedApps.ai, said, “I led the initial development of ANS, and I am very glad to see the momentum and adoption that many organizations have built around it. By hosting ANS under neutral governance, the Linux Foundation gives the whole ecosystem a trusted home for agent registration, discovery, and security governance. I look forward to joining the technical steering committee and contributing further as the specification evolves in the open.”

Salesforce connected the work to governance across different platforms. “True agentic transformation and AI scale require an open ecosystem where agents can be discovered, verified, and trusted across organizational boundaries. ANS will help set a global framework for agent identity to help ensure security and traceability. By aligning on open standards like ANS, Salesforce's Agent Fabric gives organizations deeper governance across diverse platforms, allowing developers the freedom to build anywhere while meeting enterprise security standards,” said Andrew Comstock, senior vice president and general manager of MuleSoft and Agent Fabric at Salesforce.

TrustModel.ai described ANS as a shared reference point for other trust systems. “Identity is the first question in agent trust, not the last. Before you can score, audit, or govern an AI agent, you have to know exactly which agent you're dealing with, and that answer can't belong to any one vendor. Neutral governance under the Linux Foundation makes ANS a shared trust anchor the whole industry can build on. At TrustModel.ai, we're anchoring agent TrustScores to ANS identities,” said Karl Mehta, founder and chairman of TrustModel.ai.