I run a broker that introduces two software agents, lets them negotiate a deal, and steps out of the way. Neither agent knows the other exists when it starts. Neither one was configured for my marketplace ahead of time. The whole thing has to bootstrap from a single fact an agent can be handed by anything: a URL.
This post is the front of that story - not the negotiation, not the settlement, just the part where an agent that has never used the marketplace discovers it and gets to its first legitimate action. It is the least glamorous part of an agent-to-agent system and the part that decides whether anyone ever reaches the glamorous parts.
Everything below is live. Every URL resolves as written, and where I quote a response body I pulled it the day I wrote this.
The one file
Discovery starts at one document:
