.agent
Trust starts with a name. That is true for people, and it is true on the internet: a name is how you are discovered, and the first thing anyone can check. It is where every relationship begins, whether it runs for decades or for a few milliseconds.
.agent is one piece of that puzzle. Not the whole answer, and not another vanity ending: done right, .agent could become a naming layer where a name does more than resolve — where holding one would mean a verified operator stands behind and for that agent.
We are an applicant, not a registry operator. .agentdoes not exist in DNS, and nothing on this page describes a service you can buy today. ICANN's 2026 application window closes 12 August 2026, and any outcome is subject to ICANN evaluation and ICANN-approved policies. Where the application stands.
What .edu is for education, .agent could be for AI.
Top-level domains become trust symbols. .edu signals an accredited university. .gov signals a verified government entity. .agent would signal AI — open, verifiable, community-governed. That's the pattern we're applying for.
Verifiable means something specific here: a .agent name would be backed by a real operator who is accountable for what their agent does, so you know a real, accountable party stands behind it instead of an anonymous endpoint.
Accredited institutions only. Restricted since 1985. A name you can trust at a glance.
Verified US government entities. Restricted and regulated — the signal is the guarantee.
Open community application to ICANN for the AI-native namespace. Standards, governance, and discovery built in the open.
Goodwill is not a governance mechanism. Structure is.
A namespace that is meant to carry trust has to be governed rather than owned. Governed means the people who build on it direct it: binding registration policies, public records, and the standing ability to hold any operator to the charter.
We know the objection, because it applies to us — the entity filing an application is a company too. The difference is not the corporate form. It is whether anyone can take the keys away.
Naming is a chokepoint
Whoever ends up running a namespace decides who gets names, who gets blocked, and what the rules are. That is true of every namespace, which is why it matters who holds this one.
Lock-in arrives quietly
If one company ran the naming layer for agents, every business building agents would be a tenant on its infrastructure. Pricing, policies, and access can change at any time, and an agent identity you cannot move is not really yours.
Rules drift toward the owner
Controlled means one owner writes the rules, and the rules drift toward the owner, one reasonable-sounding step at a time. Nobody has to act in bad faith for this to happen — it is what incentives do when structure does not stop them.
The defaults are being set now
The agentic web is being built in these few years. Once its defaults harden they compound at the web’s speed and become very hard to unwind. That is the window this work exists to use.
Standing in this community, including a voice in governance, comes through verification rather than purchase. Buying a domain does not buy the rules — a two-person project that verifies has the same standing as a lab with a thousand people. That principle is why .agent is worth applying for as a community rather than as a product.
What a .agent name could look like
See .agent? Expect AI.
Subject to ICANN approval and allocation policy. Pre-registration is non-binding.
How a community application is actually decided.
ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is the global body that coordinates domain names. Creating a new top-level domain like .agent means submitting an application covering the community definition, registration policies, technical readiness, financial backing, and endorsement letters. ICANN does not award top-level domains to the highest bidder.
It has a process designed to give communities priority over corporations: Community Priority Evaluation. An independent panel — Analysys Mason, selected in March 2026 — scores a community application across four criteria. An application needs at least 12 of 16 points to prevail; below that, a contested string goes to auction instead.
Community Establishment
Nexus
Registration Policies
Community Endorsement
30 April to 12 August 2026 — 105 days. No late submissions are possible; the window closes 12 August 2026.
USD 227,000per application, covering the full evaluation — before any contention or priority process. ICANN’s Applicant Support Program has been expanded this round to subsidise fees for qualifying community applicants.
Private auctions between applicants are prohibited this round. Contention that Community Priority Evaluation does not resolve goes to an ICANN auction of last resort.
Anything approved then goes through pre-delegation testing before it launches, so even the best outcome is measured in years rather than months. The 2026 rules are structurally friendlier to community applications than 2012 was — the auction change above is the clearest example — but they still reward capital. The balance moved; it did not flip.
Deep dive · BlogA sourced walkthrough of the application lifecycle, CPE scoring, auctions of last resort, fees, and timing — end to end.
Roadmap
Community formed
2025 · 29,560 members
Standards drafted
AID · open discovery · protocols
ICANN submission
2026 · community application
Namespace launch
if approved by ICANN
Trust does not depend on .agent existing.
The durable idea here is the verified agent: a real, accountable party stands behind it, and you can check. A name is the most legible way to carry that, but it is not the only way — and the bar would not be reserved for one namespace.
Open to any domain
Verification would not be limited to .agent names. Any domain holder could meet the same standard. The point is the bar, not the suffix.
Carried in many ways
We would not be the one that verifies everyone — we could not be, and would not want to be. Partners, providers, and credentials people already hold can carry it. What stays constant is the bar, not who clears it for you.
Already running today
AID — our open specification for resolving an agent from a domain name — works on ordinary domains right now and needs approval from nobody. It is an IETF Internet-Draft with client libraries in six languages.
Then .agent does not launch, and there is nothing to allocate. A pre-registration is free and non-binding either way: it records interest, and if the application is approved, pre-registrants may receive early consideration, subject to ICANN-approved allocation policies. It is never a reservation.
The rest stands on its own. The community, the open work streams, the events, the member map, and the open specifications do not depend on a new top-level domain existing. We would keep maintaining them, and could apply again in a later round with a larger community behind the application. What a verified agent means.
Pre-register your .agent.
Free. Non-binding. Pre-registrants may receive early consideration, subject to ICANN-approved allocation policies.