Upcoming meetings
- DateNameLocation
- 09 March 2026TC56 teleconference – March 2026Teleconference
Activities:
TC56 holds regular teleconference meetings to work on the development of a natural language interaction protocol (NLIP) standard that specifies a common protocol, framework and interfaces for interactions between AI agents.
NLIP is a specification for a universal application level protocol which can enable communication among two agents. The protocol is developed by TC56 to become an Ecma standard. The Enterprise Neurosystems Group (ENG), an open-source consortium, is acting as an advisory group to TC56 providing feedback on the drafts being developed and different topics. This allows for feedback from a wider community of experts.
Five standards and one technical report defining the Natural Language Interaction Protocol (NLIP) were published in December 2025. 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. They include:
The 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.
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.
Binding of NLIP over WebSocket enables real-time, bidirectional communication using CBOR for efficient multimodal data transfer, with optional text fallback for broader compatibility.
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.
Security profiles for NLIP establishes three progressive security profiles with requirements for transport security, authentication, authorization, prompt injection prevention, and ethical-by-design principles.
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.