Linux Foundation Launches Agent Name Service to Give AI Agents Verifiable Identities
SALT LAKE CITY -- The Linux Foundation announced at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2026 that Agent Name Service (ANS), an open standard that uses Domain Name System (DNS) infrastructure to provide identity, verification and discovery for AI agents, has launched as a Linux Foundation project.
The ANS specification consists of seven documents covering domain-anchored naming, registration and versioning, DNS publication, public log auditing, integrity monitoring and agent-to-agent authentication. It defines how agents are named and registered, how their identities are published through DNS and verified, and how identity records can be monitored for unauthorized changes. A technical steering committee will govern the specification under the Linux Foundation.
Early Adoption Across Agent Directories
The AGNTCY Agent Directory Service, another Linux Foundation project, supports verification of ANS identities. Separately, ANS Finder implements the Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) specification and passes its registry conformance tests. Eleven organizations have contributed to or adopted the standard since its intent to launch was announced in June, including Cisco, Cloudflare, DigiCert, GoDaddy, Infoblox, Salesforce and OWASP.
“Autonomous AI agents are transacting and operating across global systems, but they can’t succeed without verifiable identity,” said Jim Zemlin, CEO of the Linux Foundation. “Under the neutral governance of the Linux Foundation, ANS provides a common foundation for trust that the entire industry can adopt, implement and improve together.”
The specification and open source code are available on GitHub.
