AI Agents (A2A)

Connect AI agents to VibeXP using the Agent-to-Agent (A2A) protocol. Add any A2A-compatible agent, chat with it, and track task execution in real time.

Overview

A2A is an open standard for communicating with AI agents. VibeXP speaks A2A through the official a2a-go SDK and supports protocol v1.0, with automatic negotiation down to v0.3 for older agents.

What VibeXP handles for you:

• Discovery: fetches and validates the agent card
• Invocation: sends tasks, synchronous or streaming
• Live updates: streams status and results while the agent works
• Cancellation: stop a running task from the chat
• Conversations: multi-turn chats with full context

Adding an agent

Agents belong to a team. To add one:

1. Open Agents in the sidebar
2. Click Add agent
3. Enter the agent’s base URL (for example https://your-agent-domain.com)
4. Wait for the agent card preview to load
5. Choose the initial status: Active or Paused
6. Click Create agent

VibeXP discovers the agent card at <base URL>/.well-known/agent-card.json. The agent’s name, description, version, skills, and capabilities all come from the card. You do not enter them manually.

Notes:

• The card must be served from exactly /.well-known/agent-card.json over HTTP or HTTPS, and must be 1 MB or smaller.
• The base URL cannot be changed after creation. Delete and re-add the agent to point at a new URL.
• Agents cannot be moved between teams.

Host restrictions

In production, VibeXP refuses agent URLs that resolve to loopback, private, link-local, or cloud-metadata addresses. In local development these hosts are allowed, so you can test against an agent running on localhost.

The agent card

The agent detail page renders the card as declared by the agent:

• Interfaces: A2A v1.0 cards list supportedInterfaces, each with a URL, protocol binding (JSON-RPC or REST), and protocol version. VibeXP uses the primary interface.
• Streaming: whether the agent supports streaming updates (capabilities.streaming).
• Skills: the agent’s declared skills with tags.
• Input and output modes: the content types the agent accepts and returns.

Credentials

If the agent card declares securitySchemes, a credentials editor appears when you edit the agent. Two credential types are supported:

Type	Meaning
apiKey	A key sent in a header, query parameter, or cookie, as the card specifies. Keys sent in the Authorization header get a Bearer prefix automatically.
http	HTTP authentication via the Authorization header, Basic or Bearer.

Other schemes (oauth2, openIdConnect, mutualTLS) are shown as unsupported and rejected on save.

Credential handling:

• Credentials are encrypted at rest and never shown back in full.
• When the card lists multiple schemes, VibeXP picks one deterministically: the card’s declared security requirements first, then alphabetical order.
• Once credentials are stored, VibeXP also uses them to re-fetch the agent card, so cards behind authentication work too.

Permissions

Agent actions are authorized by the caller’s team role (RBAC). See Team roles & permissions.

• Creating an agent requires the resource.create permission, held by every Owner, Admin, and Member.
• Updating, editing, and running any of the team’s agents is open to every team member, including the agent’s stored credentials.

Running tasks

Open an agent and send a message to start a task:

1. Select an active agent
2. Type your task in the chat
3. Send

Example:

Analyze this codebase and identify performance bottlenecks in the API layer.

VibeXP picks the invocation mode automatically:

• Streaming agents return updates live over SSE as the task progresses.
• Synchronous agents return a reply directly. If the task is not yet terminal, VibeXP polls it until it completes (up to 5 minutes).

Task statuses

Status	Meaning
pending / submitted	Task accepted, not yet running
working / running	The agent is executing the task
input-required	The agent is waiting for your input
auth-required	The agent is waiting for authorization
completed / success	Task finished successfully
failed / error	Task ended with an error
cancelled	Task was cancelled

Cancelling a task

While a task is running, a Cancel button appears in the chat. Cancelling stops the local stream, asks the remote agent to cancel the task, and marks the execution cancelled. A task that already reached a terminal state cannot be cancelled.

Timeouts

Timeouts are set by the instance operator, not per task:

• Synchronous tasks: 5 minutes by default (a2a.default_timeout)
• Streaming tasks: 2 hours by default (a2a.stream_timeout)

Streaming uses its own timeout, so long-running streams are not cut short by the sync limit.

Conversations

Messages to the same agent are grouped into conversations, so follow-ups keep full context:

• Continue a conversation by opening it and sending another message.
• Click Start new chat to begin a fresh conversation.
• Past executions, replies, timestamps, and errors stay available in the conversation history.

Agent stats

The Agents page shows per-agent and team-level stats:

• Per agent: total runs, success rate, last run
• Team: total, active, paused, and errored agents, runs today and this week, and recent activity

Security

• Encrypted credentials: agent credentials are encrypted at rest and can be updated or deleted anytime.
• Team isolation: agents and their conversations are scoped to the team.
• Host protection: production deployments block internal and cloud-metadata addresses to prevent request forgery.
• Activity log: agent changes and runs are recorded in team activity.

Troubleshooting

Cannot add an agent

• Check the base URL: the card must exist at <base URL>/.well-known/agent-card.json.
• Confirm the card is valid A2A: name, description, version, interfaces, input and output modes, and skills are required.
• On a production instance, make sure the agent host is publicly reachable. Private and loopback addresses only work in local development.

Task fails

• Read the error in the conversation history.
• Verify the stored credentials are still valid.
• Send a new message to retry. There is no automatic retry.

Agent is offline

Running tasks fail with a network or timeout error. Once the agent is back, send a new message to run the task again.

Frequently asked questions

What agents are compatible?

Any agent implementing the A2A protocol, v1.0 or v0.3. This includes custom agents you build and host yourself.

How many agents can I connect?

There is no built-in limit on the number of agents per team.

Are conversations private?

Conversations are scoped to your team and stored with the rest of your team data. Agent credentials are encrypted.

Can I run agents on my own infrastructure?

Yes. Build an A2A agent, serve its card at /.well-known/agent-card.json, and add its base URL. On a self-hosted instance in local development mode, localhost agents work too.

Related features

• MCP Server - Direct tool integration
• Artifacts - Store agent outputs
• Memory - Provide context to agents