Decagon Open-Sources PACT Protocol to Standardize AI Agent Interoperability
Decagon has released the Personal Agent Consent & Trust (PACT) protocol to standardize how AI agents interact with businesses while ensuring user privacy.
A conceptual diagram showing the secure, token-based handshake between personal agents and business systems.
- Decagon has introduced the PACT protocol to allow secure, authenticated communication between personal AI agents and business systems.
- The protocol leverages OAuth 2.0 and Agent2Agent standards to separate agent identity from customer consent.
- PACT is being developed as an open standard to facilitate consistent integrations across different AI platforms.
The Need for Standardized Agent Communication
As the adoption of personal AI agents increases, these systems are beginning to handle more complex tasks on behalf of users, such as booking appointments, managing account subscriptions, and negotiating purchases. Previously, these interactions often mimicked human behavior by driving web interfaces, which presented security risks and authentication challenges. Brands struggled to verify the identity of the AI agents contacting them, and users were forced to share credentials to enable automated actions.
To address these challenges, Decagon has open-sourced the Personal Agent Consent & Trust (PACT) protocol. Developed in collaboration with Instinct, the protocol aims to provide a secure framework for personal agents to interact with the support infrastructure of businesses. By creating a standardized interface, PACT allows businesses to verify which platform is acting on behalf of a user while ensuring that sensitive login information remains private.
Protocol Design and Architecture
The PACT protocol is built upon existing technologies, specifically the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol and OAuth 2.0. This design choice enables developers to use established standards for identity and authorization. According to the technical documentation, the protocol functions through three distinct parties: the personal agent platform, the business (Brand), and the provider hosting the support agent.
The interaction process is broken down into three logical phases:
- Discovery and Connection: Personal agents discover a business's "Agent Card," which lists the endpoint and available permissions (scopes). The personal agent then authenticates its requests using a signed JSON Web Token (JWT).
- Consent and Authentication: Rather than sharing passwords, users sign in directly with the business. The business then issues a delegation token that specifies the exact permissions granted to the agent.
- Execution: The personal agent presents the delegation token alongside its identity, allowing the business's agent to perform actions strictly within the pre-defined constraints.
Separating Identity from Authority
A key principle behind PACT is the separation of identity from authority. The protocol enables a business to verify that a request is coming from a legitimate, trusted personal agent independently of whether that agent has been granted specific permissions to modify a user's account. This decoupling allows for more granular security policies, as businesses can define their own authorization scopes, such as read-only access to order history versus the ability to perform cancellations.
Industry Collaboration and Adoption
Decagon has stated that PACT is intended to be an open industry standard. The company has joined the Personal Agent Protocol working group, which was previously announced by the development team behind Muse. By publishing the specification and code on GitHub, the organizers aim to encourage adoption among other personal agent developers, support vendors, and businesses.
The goal is to ensure that a user's choice of personal agent is not limited by the platforms a specific business chooses to support. By providing a consistent integration pattern, PACT seeks to reduce the friction developers face when building cross-platform agent systems. Whether acting as a personal assistant or an automated concierge, agents using PACT can operate with verified credentials while adhering to business-side security and policy constraints.
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