Why .agent?
Agents need names, not just IDs
Every major platform shift follows the same pattern: machines connect first, then humans need a naming layer to make it usable.
- Early internet — IP addresses connected machines. DNS made the web usable for humans.
- Social platforms — User IDs ran the database. Handles made communities possible.
- Agents — Endpoint URLs connect systems. Names will make the agentic web trustworthy.
Without names, agents are anonymous strings. agent-7f3a2b-us-east tells you nothing about who built it, who's accountable, or whether you should trust it.
support.acme.agent tells you everything.
Names create trust
When you see hire.ycombinator.agent, you know instantly: this is YC's recruiting agent. It carries the brand's reputation. If something goes wrong, you know who to contact.
Names turn anonymous compute into accountable entities. That matters when agents are:
- Handling customer support
- Managing financial transactions
- Making decisions on behalf of organizations
- Interacting with other agents autonomously
Someone will own this layer
Here's the strategic reality: the naming layer for agents is inevitable. The only question is who controls it.
If a single platform captures agent identity, they control:
- Who can name agents — and who can't
- Discovery — which agents are findable and which aren't
- Trust signals — what counts as "verified" and who decides
- Interoperability — whether agents work across platforms or only within one
That's not a hypothetical. It's the playbook we've seen with app stores, social platforms, and cloud infrastructure. Whoever controls the namespace controls the ecosystem.
Why community governance matters
If the naming layer is controlled by one company:
- Competitors get disadvantaged. Your agents are second-class citizens on someone else's platform.
- Lock-in becomes structural. Moving your agent identity means losing your name, your reputation, your discoverability.
- Rules favor the owner. Policies get set to maximize the platform's interests, not the ecosystem's.
A community-governed .agent TLD means:
- Fair access — anyone can register, with transparent pricing and policies.
- Neutral ground — no platform gets preferential treatment.
- Open standards — the protocols for discovery and verification are open specs, not proprietary APIs.
- Collective decision-making — policies are set by the builders and users, not by a board serving one company's shareholders.
The window is now
ICANN's next application round for new TLDs is the mechanism. Once .agent is delegated, whoever holds it sets the rules for decades.
If the community doesn't secure it, a single company will. And every organization building agents will operate in that company's namespace, under that company's rules.
That's why we're building the coalition now — developers, AI labs, enterprises, researchers, and educators — to make the case for community ownership before the window closes.
Ready to help? Join the community or read how governance works.