Understand the AgentCore Runtime service contract - Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Supported protocolsCompare supported protocols

Understand the AgentCore Runtime service contract

The AgentCore Runtime service contract defines the standardized communication protocol that your agent application must implement to integrate with the Amazon Bedrock agent hosting infrastructure. This contract ensures seamless communication between your custom agent code and AWS's managed hosting environment.

Topics

Supported protocols

The AgentCore Runtime service contract supports the following communication protocols:

  • HTTP : Direct REST API endpoints for traditional request/response patterns

  • MCP : Model Context Protocol for tools and agent servers

  • A2A : Agent-to-Agent protocol for multi-agent communication and discovery

  • AGUI : Agent-to-User Interface protocol for interactive agent experiences with UI rendering

Compare supported protocols

Compare the HTTP, MCP, A2A, and AGUI protocols to understand the differences and use cases.

Feature HTTP Protocol MCP Protocol A2A Protocol AGUI Protocol

Port

8080

8000

9000

8080

Mount Path

/invocations (HTTP), /ws (WebSocket)

/mcp

/ (root)

/invocations (SSE), /ws (WebSocket)

Message Format

REST JSON/SSE, WebSocket (text/binary)

JSON-RPC

JSON-RPC 2.0

Event streams (SSE/WebSocket)

Discovery

N/A

Tool listing

Agent Cards

N/A

Authentication

SigV4, OAuth 2.0; WebSocket supports SigV4 by headers and query params

SigV4, OAuth 2.0

SigV4, OAuth 2.0

SigV4, OAuth 2.0

Use Case

Direct API calls, real-time streaming

Tool servers

Agent-to-agent communication

Interactive UI experiences