LAD-A2A: How AI agents find each other on local networks

Francesco Villano — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 20:45:15 +0000

AI agents are getting really good at doing things, but they're completely blind to their physical surroundings.

If you walk into a hotel and you have an AI assistant (like the Chatgpt mobile app), it has no idea there may be a concierge agent on the network that could help you book a spa, check breakfast times, or request late checkout. Same thing at offices, hospitals, cruise ships. The agents are there, but there's no way to discover them.

A2A (Google's agent-to-agent protocol) handles how agents talk to each other. MCP handles how agents use tools. But neither answers a basic question: how do you find agents in the first place?

So I built LAD-A2A, a simple discovery protocol. When you connect to a Wi-Fi, your agent can automatically find what's available using mDNS (like how AirDrop finds nearby devices) or a standard HTTP endpoint.

The spec is intentionally minimal. I didn't want to reinvent A2A or create another complex standard. LAD-A2A just handles discovery, then hands off to A2A for actual communication.

Open source, Apache 2.0. Includes a working Python implementation you can run to see it in action.

Curious what people think!

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LAD-A2A: How AI agents find each other on local networks