This guide provides an overview of hosting Agent2Agent (A2A) agents on Cloud Run.
For an introduction on A2A concepts, see Key Concepts in A2A.
Relationship of AI Agents and the A2A Protocol
AI Agents are software programs that can perceive their environment, make decisions, and take autonomous actions to achieve specific goals. These agents are becoming increasingly sophisticated, often leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for complex tasks like reasoning, planning, and natural language interactions.
As more specialized AI agents are developed, the need for them to communicate and collaborate becomes essential. The Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol is an open standard designed to enable seamless and secure communication and interoperability between AI agents, even if they are built using different frameworks, by different vendors, or are running on separate servers. A2A allows agents to work together as peers without exposing their internal state or logic.
The following diagram illustrates the architecture of an A2A Agent system, showing an A2A Client (user or agent) interacting with the A2A Agent:
The A2A Agent's core is a serving and orchestration layer, such as Cloud Run. This layer manages interactions with AI models like Gemini and Vertex AI, memory storages like AlloyDB and A2A TaskStore, and external tools through APIs. Clients interact with the agent by sending requests, such as "Get Agent Card" or "send message," and receive task updates.
For information about A2A request lifecycle, see the A2A Request Lifecycle section.
What's next
- To learn the practical steps for deploying your own A2A agents, see Build and deploy an A2A agent on Cloud Run.