This paper addresses the lack of standardized interoperability between AI agents built on different frameworks and deployed across organizations. It introduces the Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP), an application-layer protocol developed collaboratively and standardized by Ecma International, providing a lightweight semantic message envelope that can travel over HTTP/HTTPS, WebSocket, and AMQP. The authors detail NLIP’s design rationale, message model, and security considerations, and present a reference implementation showing how it lets agents, tools, and enterprise services built on heterogeneous stacks communicate and adapt to one another, addressing fragmentation in the emerging AI agent ecosystem.
