{
  "id": 10547192,
  "title": "Your agents can’t collaborate if they only speak tool calls — the A2A protocol that fixes peer handoffs — A2A Under the Linux Foundation",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/28/your-agents-cant-collaborate-if-they-only-speak-tool-calls-the-a2a",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-28T22:20:23.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/alex_aslam/your-agents-cant-collaborate-if-they-only-speak-tool-calls-the-a2a-protocol-that-fixes-peer-4o0d"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "For weeks, a reporter tried configuring a billing agent to request a refund from another agent. The billing agent needed to determine if a refund was warranted, while the refund agent required policy assessment, account history review, and potential refusal. The reporter initially wired the agents as function calls, but the billing agent waited 14 seconds for a tool that attempted to think. The reporter realized agents should not be treated like mere functions.\n\nThe Tool-Call Trap arises when agents are wired together using tool calls, leading to issues when tools develop advanced capabilities. After tuning prompts, the reporter concluded the architecture was the issue, not the model. The mistake was confusing the vertical with the horizontal. Tool calls cannot handle peer-to-peer collaboration, as evidenced by the failure of model context protocols like MCP, which connects agents to tools but lacks a concept of agents with goals, models, and authority.\n\nThe Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol, launched by Google in April 2025 and governed by the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation, addresses this limitation. A2A enables peer-to-peer collaboration between AI agents without custom integration code. A2A standardizes how agents delegate work to one another, much like HTTP standardizes communication between web servers and browsers. A2A standardizes four objects: Agent Cards, Tasks, Messages, and Artifacts. Agent Cards allow agents to discover each other without needing pre-existing knowledge, while Tasks represent the work to be done and progress through a defined state lifecycle. This protocol assumes the receiving agent is opaque, providing a JSON manifest (Agent Card) and task information, without exposing proprietary logic or sensitive data. A2A is now a neutral standard with founding members from major cloud providers and enterprise SaaS platforms, ensuring its long-term viability and preventing vendor lock-in.",
  "summary": "I spent three weeks trying to make a billing agent ask a refund agent a question. Not a tool call—an actual question. The billing agent needed to know whether a refund was appropriate, and the refund agent needed to reason about policy, check account history, and possibly refuse. I wired it up as a function call anyway. The billing agent waited fourteen seconds for a \"tool\" that was actually…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}