A travel assistant might delegate a specialist task to another agent service and receive a result or a request for more input. The protocol describes the exchange; it does not choose the business objective or establish that either participant’s answer is correct.
The distinction from MCP is the interaction’s role. MCP connects an AI application to exposed capabilities and data. A2A coordinates independent agents as task participants. A system can use both.
In episode 31, at 4:38, Cisco’s Giovanna Carofiglio discusses agent communication protocols and the need for interoperability. Carofiglio describes work on the Agent Connect Protocol (ACP) and an intention to support A2A alongside other protocols. The episode was sponsored by Galileo.
That discussion is an architectural use case, not a claim that all protocol versions work together automatically. Teams still need compatible implementations, authentication, authorization, and checks on the delegated result. Check the A2A specification for version-specific details.
Sources
- A2A: What is A2A? — Official overview of agent interoperability and the relationship with MCP; checked October 2026.
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