Auto Agent Protocol v1.0 Launches Open Standard for AI Agents in Automotive Retail
Key Takeaways
- ▸AAP v1.0 standardizes AI agent interactions with automotive dealerships through a published, open specification with mandatory automotive skills
- ▸Supports multiple protocol bindings (JSON-RPC 2.0 and HTTP+JSON) enabling flexibility in how agents communicate
- ▸Designed for backward compatibility with legacy dealer CRM systems via ADF/XML mapping, reducing adoption friction
Summary
Auto Agent Protocol (AAP) has released version 1.0 of its Automotive Retail Profile, an open specification that enables AI agents to discover dealerships, browse inventory, and submit leads through standardized agent-to-agent (A2A) messaging. Built on top of the A2A v1.0 protocol, AAP implements seven required automotive skills accessible via both JSON-RPC 2.0 and HTTP+JSON bindings, allowing buyer agents to interact seamlessly with compliant dealer agents.
The specification emphasizes compatibility with legacy automotive systems, providing field-by-field mapping to the ADF/XML format used by dealer CRM systems, enabling existing infrastructure to adopt AAP without code changes. The release includes comprehensive documentation, JSON schemas, OpenAPI specifications, and examples at autoagentprotocol.org.
AAP v1.0 focuses on core dealer interactions—inventory discovery, dealership information retrieval, and lead submission (general inquiry, vehicle-specific, and appointment requests)—while intentionally excluding authentication, payments, financing, and reservations in the initial release. The open specification is licensed under Apache 2.0 for code and CC-BY-4.0 for documentation.
- Scope limited to discovery, inventory search, and lead submission—authentication, payments, and financing deferred to future versions
