New AI communication standards enable cross-domain agent interoperability through envelope protocol approach
Ecma International published on 10 December 2025 five new standards and one technical report defining the Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP). These specifications establish an open, secure foundation for AI agents to communicate across organizational boundaries and technology platforms, replacing hard-coded application programming interfaces with a universal envelope protocol.
NLIP enables multi-turn conversational exchanges between humans and AI agents, as well as agent-to-agent interaction, regardless of their organizational domains or internal technologies. This approach eliminates many challenges associated with API management in current software systems and enables the development of universal client applications that can communicate with any NLIP-enabled agent.
The approved standards
ECMA-430: Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP) defines the core multimodal message format supporting text, structured data, binary content, and location information. By translating between the standard wire formats and internal structures, agents using different technologies can interoperate seamlessly.
ECMA-431: Binding of NLIP over HTTP/HTTPS makes NLIP accessible to existing web infrastructure by defining standardized endpoints with support for HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3.
ECMA-432: Binding of NLIP over WebSocket enables real-time, bidirectional communication using CBOR for efficient multimodal data transfer, with optional text fallback for broader compatibility.
ECMA-433: Binding of NLIP over AMQP leverages enterprise-grade messaging for complex multi-agent topologies, supporting hybrid and multi-cloud deployments where agents must communicate across network boundaries.
ECMA-434: Security profiles for NLIP establishes three progressive security profiles with requirements for transport security, authentication, authorization, prompt injection prevention, and ethical-by-design principles.
ECMA TR/113: Explanatory guide to NLIP provides implementation guidance, use cases, and examples demonstrating how NLIP’s envelope protocol eliminates API versioning challenges while supporting integration with existing systems.
Impact and availability
These standards enable transformative new applications: universal mobile apps that work across banking, healthcare, transit, and government services; enterprise agents that federate across departments and organizations; and seamless integration between legacy systems and modern AI capabilities.
ECMA-430, ECMA-431, ECMA-432, ECMA-433, ECMA-434, and ECMA TR/113 were developed by Ecma Technical Committee 56 and are available free of charge from the Ecma International website. Open-source reference implementations can be found on GitHub.
For more information, please contact Patrick Luthi, Secretary of Ecma TC56 at media@ecma-international.org