Understand the AgentCore Runtime service contract - Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Supported protocolsCompare supported protocols

Understand the AgentCore Runtime service contract

The AgentCore Runtime service contract defines the standardized communication protocol that your agent application must implement to integrate with the Amazon Bedrock agent hosting infrastructure. This contract ensures seamless communication between your custom agent code and AWS's managed hosting environment.

Supported protocols

The AgentCore Runtime service contract supports the following communication protocols:

  • HTTP: Direct REST API endpoints for traditional request/response patterns

  • MCP: Model Context Protocol for tools and agent servers

  • A2A: Agent-to-Agent protocol for multi-agent communication and discovery

Compare supported protocols

Compare the A2A, HTTP, and MCP protocols to understand the differences and use cases.

Protocol Comparison
Feature HTTP Protocol MCP Protocol A2A Protocol
Port 8080 8000 9000
Mount Path /invocations (HTTP), /ws (WebSocket) /mcp / (root)
Message Format REST JSON/SSE, WebSocket (text/binary) JSON-RPC JSON-RPC 2.0
Discovery N/A Tool listing Agent Cards
Authentication SigV4, OAuth 2.0; WebSocket supports SigV4 by headers and query params SigV4, OAuth 2.0 SigV4, OAuth 2.0
Use Case Direct API calls, real-time streaming Tool servers Agent-to-agent communication
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