What the A2A Server Does

Agent2Agent lets another agent delegate a task to this install, and lets this install delegate tasks out to agents you have allowlisted.

Where to find it

The endpoint is served at /a2a. Configuration is through its datastores, opened from All Datastores.

Tasks, not calls

This is the difference from MCP. An MCP call is a request that returns an answer. An A2A task is a unit of work with a lifecycle: accepted, worked on, possibly asking a question back, and eventually completed or failed. That suits work that takes longer than a request, or needs a person in the middle.

Skills

What this install can be asked to do is expressed as skills — capabilities advertised to the calling agent, covering datastore queries and ledger operations among others. A calling agent discovers the skills rather than being told about them out of band.

Delegating outward

The same mechanism works in reverse: this install can hand a task to another agent. Outbound delegation is restricted to an allowlist, and that restriction is the point — an agent that can delegate to anything can be talked into delegating to anything.

When to use it

A2A suits multi-step work crossing a boundary: an agent handling an enquiry that needs a case created here, or a process here that needs specialist work done elsewhere. For simple lookups, MCP is the lighter tool.

Start with one counterpart

Allowlist a single agent, exercise a real task end to end, and read the log before adding more. Agent-to-agent work fails in less obvious ways than request-and-response, and the first counterpart is where you learn what those are.