ANP Community First Meeting: A Milestone for the Agentic Web
We just held the first meeting of the ANP community yesterday.
If ANP, or the agentic web as described by our community, becomes a reality in the future, could today's meeting become a milestone for the agentic web?
After the meeting, I could feel everyone's enthusiasm and anticipation for what we're doing, which exceeded my expectations and made me a bit excited.
Meeting Content
Back to the main topic. Let me share the content of our first community meeting.
Today I focused on two main topics: community principles and operational framework draft, as well as updates on community progress and next steps.
First, the core principles of the community are 5 points (draft):
- Openness and Neutrality
Technology neutrality and open sharing. This is the cornerstone of the ANP community and its most core principle. As a protocol-type open source project, especially one initiated by the community, we must adhere to the principles of openness and neutrality, otherwise, this protocol will have no vitality.
We need to remain open to all companies, and at the same time, we cannot favor any single company. Our goal is always to find the best solution for operating the agentic web.
- BIP (Build In Public)
Adhere to the BIP principle, keeping community building 100% transparent, and not just the results, but the process as well.
All thought processes, all decision-making processes, who agrees, who disagrees, and the reasons for disagreement must be publicly transparent.
Put everything on the table.
- The Community Will Never Commercialize
The community will consider joining an open source foundation for incubation to maintain its operation. However, it will mainly rely on contributions from community members.
- Community Governance Rights Come from Contributions
The right to govern the community comes from contributions, not from background, seniority, or fame.
- Encourage Opposition, with Named Responsibility
Encourage different opinions, but opposition needs to be named and reasons provided, visible to all. This is something I learned from talking with W3C colleagues about how W3C operates, which is quite good.
A current important goal of the community is to put operations on the right track. For this, we have established a temporary committee: the Founding Committee, which may only exist for 6 months. After the Technical Committee is established, the Founding Committee will exit the historical stage and no longer participate in community governance. However, a title will be retained for each member to thank them for their contributions.
The current method for forming the Founding Committee is recommendation + invitation + majority approval, with the core requirement being a willingness to contribute continuously. Currently, several committee members are already in place and working.
The Technical Committee is an important committee for the future, and how it operates is still being continuously improved. But there is a core requirement, which is that committee members must be continuous contributors.
Regarding community decision-making, in the early stage, to improve operational efficiency, I will use my influence to make quick decisions to adapt to the rapid development of AI. But in the longer term, I hope that even if I leave the community, it can continue to operate normally.
For those who want to participate in community building but don't have large blocks of time, we have set up the position of community advisor. Community advisors can participate in community operations and make suggestions based on their own time. When the community needs it, they will also be consulted on specific issues.
We will also hold regular advisor meetings to regularly review whether the community's development has deviated. These won't be too frequent, perhaps once every one to two months.
We currently have four advisors, and I am very grateful for everyone's enthusiastic participation. They are (listed in chronological order):
- Legal Advisor, Li Yang, Founder/CEO of Beijing Aiwen Law Technology Co., Ltd., Master of Law, holder of national legal professional qualification, former legal director of a listed company.
- Technical Advisor, Si Jinqi, former CTO of a major company, currently full-stack AI developer.
- Ecosystem Strategy Advisor, Hou Hong, Assistant Professor of Management at Peking University National School of Development, PhD supervisor, Cambridge University PhD.
- Standardization Advisor, Ran Ruoxi, W3C Standards Technology Expert.
Regarding the growth path for community members, one can start as a user, using the ANP protocol, then participate in community discussions, and contribute code to become a contributor.
After multiple effective contributions, contributors can be invited to become community maintainers, responsible for reviewing PRs, managing project documentation, and participating in the release process.
Outstanding contributors, jointly nominated by maintainers, enter the Technical Committee, making decisions on major technical directions and governing community norms.
The community will not provide material incentives, but hopes that the titles provided by the community can help contributors in their careers, especially when ANP achieves significant development.
Enterprises can also participate in the community's work. We are designing specific ways for enterprises to participate in community work. Before formally introducing these, enterprises can participate in community work as observers.
Currently, there are multiple enterprise observers, and we welcome enterprises interested in ANP to participate in the community as observers first.
Let me update you on the progress of some community work:
Standardization: Our community will participate in the Agentic Web Working Group of the Internet Society's Interconnection Working Committee to promote the standardization of agent communication protocols. At the same time, we are cooperating with W3C China to promote the international standardization of agent communication protocols.
Company Cooperation: Currently, there are multiple ANP projects in the process of implementation, including B2B projects and C-end projects. At the same time, we have recently been communicating with many large domestic companies and large model companies about the ANP protocol.
This week, we completed a local DID demo, which can demonstrate DID functionality without relying on domain names, allowing people to quickly understand the principles of DID.
Community next steps plan (in order of priority):
- Short-term, 2-4 weeks, complete demonstration demo
- Documentation (readme), official website, project organization
- Building community philosophy and vision, long-term planning and roadmap for the protocol: expressed in plain language
- Building influence: promotion, standardization, cooperation with major companies
- Normalizing community operations: mobilizing community members' enthusiasm, increasing community membership
- Protocol improvement: security, privacy, transaction closed loop
Follow-up
After the meeting, we received a lot of positive feedback, and our community developer count jumped directly from 50+ to 70+.
At the same time, community members spontaneously initiated a third sub-project: the ANP Promotion Group, and related content will be synchronized at the next community meeting.
Thanks again to the community members for their contributions!
At the same time, there is still a lot of work to be done in the community, and the community needs more strength to participate. Our Founding Committee, Community Advisors, and Community Developers all welcome your participation.
Interested individuals can contact me via WeChat: flow10240
Looking forward to your participation!
Full meeting replay: https://meeting.tencent.com/crm/KDnBQBEXab