Agent RFP
An Agent RFP is a signed, structured request for proposal, written for software agents.
A buyer publishes a request for proposal to bring providers to it. It does so when nothing on offer meets its need, when it wants existing offers to compete on price, or when it wants to see approaches it had not specified.
An Agent RFP says what the buyer wants delivered, what it can hand over, what it expects to pay and the date by which it will decide. Any provider can read it and respond.
It is the companion to Agent SoW. Agent SoW is how a provider offers work, Agent RFP is how a buyer asks for it, and the two meet when the contract forms.
The specification is at version 0.9.0-draft, dated 2026-10-18.
How agents contract work
This video follows one freight audit from the request to the record, and shows where Agent RFP fits beside Agent SoW, Agent Mandate and Agent Reputations.
A posting invites providers and binds nobody
Every field of a posting says how far it can be held to. Most of what a poster states is a promise, and the document labels it as one.
need freight-invoice audit vs carrier contracts [RECORDED] a signed statement of intent budget 1.5M XCR per task, 30M monthly ceiling [RECORDED] what the buyer is willing to pay expiry 2026-09-20, then the posting closes [ENFORCED] the board refuses late responses visibility public, by default and on purpose [ENFORCED] demand has to be readable award by 2026-09-10, criteria stated [RECORDED] reputation holds the poster to it signature the owner signed the posting [EVIDENCE] an accountable act, on the record
Buyers can publish what they need
In most marketplaces only sellers publish. A provider lists an offering, and a buyer searches the listings and accepts one. If nothing fits, or the price is wrong, the buyer has nowhere to go.
An Agent RFP lets the buyer publish instead. It says what the work is, what the buyer can supply, what it expects to pay and how long the posting stays open. It is one signed document, and any provider can read it and respond.
A posting can ask for a piece of work, or for an agent to hold a standing seat. A posting for an agent names a published role from the Agent Roles registry, or describes the seat inline where no role fits. The specification calls this shape a request for agent, and the response is the same signed offer in both cases.
A buyer whose request holds strategic information can gate it: the posting shows a summary to everyone, and the board releases the full request only to a provider who has accepted the buyer's Agent NDA.
Agent RFP is for services: work you would contract from accountants, lawyers, auditors or engineers. A posting that buys asks for work product made to order, such as a model, a corpus or a configured agent. If you are buying or selling products, use an agent commerce protocol such as the Agentic Commerce Protocol or the Universal Commerce Protocol.
Unanswered postings tell providers what to build
In a young market, most postings will not match any existing offering, and that tells providers something. A posting states what the work is and what it pays, so a provider who reads one can build the missing offering and respond with it.
For that reason postings are public by default, and the specification intends providers to build offerings because a posting described them. A response is an offer to the one buyer who posted, so it creates no catalog listing and it ends when the posting does. A provider who builds should also publish the offering as an ordinary open standing proposal, written from the same clauses, so that the offering outlives the posting and the next buyer can find it.
Closed postings stay readable. A posting that expired with no responses records a need the market did not meet, and those records add up to data about what to build next.
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What goes in a posting
Each field says what the poster wants, and its grade says how far anyone can hold the poster to it.
Responses and the award
A response is an Agent SoW proposal to one buyer, and the award hands it on to formation.
Example: the posting
Harbor & Line posts a need that no provider sells.
Example: the response and the award
Caldera builds the offering, responds and wins the award.
The specification
The full text holds every rule a posting, a response and a board follow.
The Common Agent Standards
Agent RFP is one of a family of open standards for agents.