This Charter defines the mission, scope, deliverables, and operational structure of the Semantic Agent Communication Community Group. The Group focuses on semantic structures that enable autonomous software agents to interoperate in a verifiable, accountable, and machine-interpretable manner. The scope covers identity, delegation, capability description, intent modeling, semantic logs, and conformance definitions necessary for interoperable agent-to-agent communication.
This document is a draft Charter under active development. Feedback is welcome via the Group’s GitHub Issues. The Group operates under the W3C Community and Business Group Process.
The Semantic Agent Communication Community Group aims to define the semantic foundations required for interoperable agent-to-agent communication. Existing approaches focus on transport protocols or model-specific behavior. This Group focuses instead on the semantic layer: identity, delegation, capability representation, intent modeling, execution traceability, and interoperable interfaces across heterogeneous agent systems.
The Community Group will define and maintain the formal ontology, semantic structures, and supporting representations that enable autonomous software agents to communicate in a verifiable and semantically consistent manner. The scope includes the following areas:
The following areas are explicitly out of scope:
All deliverables will be published as Community Group Reports under the W3C Software and Document License. The Group may update deliverables iteratively, subject to the Decision Process outlined in this Charter.
This section defines the roles required for the effective operation of the Semantic Agent Communication Community Group. Individuals may hold multiple roles. Role assignments may be proposed by the Chair and confirmed through the Group’s Decision Process.
The Chair ensures that the Group operates in accordance with the W3C Community Group Process. The Chair organizes meetings, prepares agendas, evaluates consensus, and initiates Calls for Consensus (CfC) when needed. The Chair may appoint Editors and Coordinators and may delegate operational responsibilities.
Editors are responsible for maintaining the authoritative drafts of normative and non-normative documents produced by the Group. Editors implement the outcomes of the Decision Process and must ensure consistency across revisions.
Editors may incorporate editorial (non-substantive) changes without a Call for Consensus. Substantive changes require consensus or a CfC.
The Coordinator maintains the catalog of use cases and requirements, ensuring traceability between use cases and normative concepts in the specifications. The role does not define normative semantics.
The Liaison Coordinator manages communication with related W3C Groups, Community Groups, and external technical communities. Responsibilities include tracking cross-group alignment, preparing briefing notes, and coordinating Schema.org extension proposals where appropriate.
The Test Suite Maintainer develops and maintains SHACL validation suites and example semantic messages that illustrate correct usage of the ontology. This role ensures practical testability but does not define normative semantics.
The Meeting Scribe records discussions, decisions, and action items and publishes minutes through publicly accessible channels.
Contributors participate in discussions, raise issues, and submit pull requests. Contributors must comply with the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct and follow repository contribution guidelines.
Implementers are organizations or individuals who adopt the Group’s deliverables in agent systems. Implementers provide interoperability feedback, report inconsistencies, and contribute example data or implementation notes. This role is non-governance but central to validating the specifications.
The Group operates under the W3C Community and Business Group Process . Terms in this Charter that conflict with that Process are void.
Participation requires agreement to the W3C Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct .
Substantive contributions to any normative deliverable may only be made by participants who have agreed to the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement (CLA) .
All technical work is conducted in public GitHub repositories under the
s-agent-comm organization. Contributions may be made via
pull requests, issues, or comments.
All repositories must include the standard W3C CONTRIBUTING and LICENSE files.
All technical discussions, decisions, and documents must be publicly accessible. Meeting minutes or summaries must be posted either through GitHub Issues or a public mailing list.
The Group seeks to make decisions by consensus. After discussion and due consideration of different views, the Chair will assess whether consensus has been achieved.
When consensus is unclear, the Chair may issue a Call for Consensus (CfC) allowing multi-day feedback. If substantial disagreement persists and a decision is required for progress, Committers may select an alternative that has substantial support. Individuals who disagree are encouraged to maintain alternative proposals or forks for further evaluation.
Decisions reached during meetings must be recorded in GitHub Issues. Any participant may object within seven days by providing clear technical reasons. The Chair will facilitate resolution following the Group’s process.
The Chair is chosen by Group participants. Participants may call for an election at any time if five participants, no two from the same organization, request one. Elections follow the procedures outlined in the W3C Community Group Process, including adherence to RFC 2777 for tie-breaking if needed.
The Group may propose revisions to this Charter using the Decision Process. Adoption of an amended Charter requires a 30-day approval vote and at least two-thirds support of the votes cast.
Minor corrections, such as deliverable dates or editorial adjustments, may be made through the standard Group decision process without requiring a full amendment vote.