RFC-011: Agentic Context Protocol (ACP) — 4. Protocol Participants

AIGP Specification › RFC-011: Agentic Context Protocol (ACP) › 4. Protocol Participants

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4. Protocol Participants

4.1 Provider

A provider is any application that exposes context via the ACP endpoint. Each provider owns a domain of truth.

Provider	Domain	Context Examples
identity-service	Identity & Governance	Users, groups, roles, SoD rules, entitlements, management state
analytics-service	Analytics & Conversion	Datasets, conversion results, gap analysis, policy mappings
governance-server	AI Policy & Governance	AIGP policies, model allowlists, guardrails, consent status, compliance posture
runbook-service	Execution State	Active runs, agent configs, artifact status, execution history

Provider Endpoint

Every provider MUST expose:

GET /acp/v1/context/{context_type}
Headers:
  X-ACP-Signature: hmac-sha256={signature}
  X-ACP-Timestamp: {iso_timestamp}
  X-ACP-App-Id: {requesting_app_id}
  X-ACP-Request-Id: {request_id}
Query Parameters:
  scope: {entity_id or filter}
  fields: {comma-separated field list}
  format: {json|yaml}

Response:

{
  "protocol_version": "1",
  "provider": "identity-service",
  "context_type": "user_entitlements",
  "timestamp": "2026-05-04T10:00:00Z",
  "schema_version": "1.0",
  "data": { ... },
  "ttl_seconds": 300
}

4.2 Receiver

A receiver is any agent, Gandalf instance, or artifact generator that consumes context.

Receivers MUST:

validate the context schema before use
respect TTL do not cache beyond ttl_seconds
record context consumption via AIGP RECORD message
not modify provider context it is read-only

4.3 Assembler

The assembler is the orchestration layer (typically in runbook-service) that:

Receives an execution or manufacturing request
Resolves which context sources are needed (from the plan or contract)
Fetches context from each provider in parallel
Validates each response against the declared schema
Merges context into a unified payload
Delivers the assembled context to the receiver (agent)

← 3. Architecture · Section index · 5. Context Types →