They are pitching this as complementary to the MCP [0], but I don't see it. What is the value in agents communicating in agents as opposed to just treating other agents as tools?
It's not so much about what you _can do_ but about the messaging and posturing, which is what drives the adoption of standards as a social phenomenon.
My team's been working on implementing MCP-agents and agents-as-tools and we consistently saw confusion from everyone we were selling this into (who were already bought in to hosting an MCP server for their API or SDK) for their agents because "that's not what it's for".
They are thinking about Enterprises. Shirley from accounting isn't going to install an mcp service to pull the receipt photos from Dropbox and upload them to SAP/Concur (expense reimbursement)
I think that's true in the same way Shirley from accounting isn't going to setup an OAuth token to allow her productivity app to access her calendar. With the right abstractions she can do that without needing to understand what she is doing technically
Yes, that is our assumption. reposting from above:
We are working with partners on very specific customer problems. Customers are building individual agents in different frameworks OR are purchasing agents from multiple vendors. Those agents are isolated and do not share tools, or memory, or context.
For example, most companies have an internal directory and internal private APIs and tools. They can build an agent to help complete internal tasks. However, they also may purchase an "HR Agent" or "Travel Assistant Agent" or "Tax Preparation Agent" or "Facilities Control Agent". These agents aren't sharing their private APIs and data with each other.
It's also difficult to model these agents as structured tools. For example, a "Tax Preparation Agent" may need to evaluate many different options and ask for specific different documents and information based on an individual users needs. Modeling this as 100s of tools isn't practical. That's where we see A2A helping. Talk to an agent as an agent.
This lets a user talk to only their company agent and then have that agent work with the HR Agent or Travel Booking Agent to complete complex tasks when they cannot be modeled as tools.
[0]: https://google.github.io/A2A/#/topics/a2a_and_mcp