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What is ASMP?
A two-minute explanation — no spec jargon required.
ASMP = Agent Service Manifest Protocol — a shared contact list for your AIs: what’s running on your machine, how to reach it, in a format every session can read.
The problem in one sentence
You built five local services last month. Your new AI session doesn’t know any of them exist.
What ASMP adds
| Without ASMP | With ASMP |
|---|---|
| Agent guesses ports and filenames | Agent asks: who provides email.ingest? |
| Every new service = hand-edit 2–5 config files | One manifest in ~/.asmp/services/ |
Discovery only in repos with .mcp.json | Registry on localhost:7700 — every session |
Three pieces (that’s it)
~/.asmp/host.yaml— this machine’s profile and registry locationasmp.yamlin each repo — ships with software; registry scans it into~/.asmp/services/http://127.0.0.1:7700— local API to list, scan, and search services
How it fits with MCP and A2A
| Layer | Question |
|---|---|
| MCP | What tools can I call right now? |
| A2A | What agents can I talk to? |
| ASMP | What services run on this machine, and how do I register new ones? |
They stack. A service registered in ASMP can expose MCP tools. An agent found via A2A can register services via ASMP.
What a manifest looks like
name: email-daemon
description: "Ingest and classify email"
capabilities:
provides: [email.ingest, email.classify]
endpoints:
- protocol: http
port: 8787An agent writes this when it builds a service. You review it. Other agents discover it by capability — not by memorizing port 8787.
What ASMP is not
- Not a process supervisor (launchd/systemd still run things)
- Not a cloud service catalog
- Not a replacement for your deployment config (yet) — see Three layers
Ready to try it?
asmp litmus # after bootstrap — 6 gate checks
asmp find --capability email.ingest