Agent Protocols Tech Tree

The Agent Protocols Tech Tree is a Civilization-style technology tree that shows the evolution of more and more complex protocols for building agents, coming from a "rough consensus and running code" perspective. You can stay at a high level or click through to see each protocol all the way down to the wire format.

I made this tool as an alternative to a slide deck for a conference on AI agents that included both policy/regulatory folks and tech folks -- I wanted something for the policy side that shows the complexity of the decentralized community behind AI agents and why regulating them is a messy topic; and for the tech side that would let you see what the actual tech is beneath the jargon.

I'd love to know what you think I got right or wrong. There's a bunch of ways to organize and structure this story, how various competing incentives are driving people to agree on common frameworks and ways of doing things. I'm curious how you would tell the story differently and what tech out on the right edge you think is coming up.

Tool: https://harvard-lil.github.io/agent-protocols/ Blog post: https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2026/02/23/agent-protocols-... Code: https://github.com/harvard-lil/agent-protocols/