generated: '2026-07-31'
method: searched
source:
- https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/blob/main/.github/CODEOWNERS
- https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/tree/main/adr
- https://agenticresourcediscovery.org/contributors/
- https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/blob/main/README.md
type: Governance
note: ARD has no foundation, no charter, no CLA, no named governance body and no participant roster. What
  it has instead is a CODEOWNERS file naming three individuals who can approve a normative change, a two-track
  contribution rule, and a public ADR ledger. That is a real and reviewable governance model — it is just
  an unusually small one for a specification carrying eleven corporate logos.
host: null
neutral_host: false
foundation: null
license: Apache-2.0 (ard-spec, ard-docs); ard-connectors carries no LICENSE file
decision_process:
  normative_changes: open an issue first for discussion and consensus among maintainers before a pull
    request
  other_changes: pull requests welcome directly (docs, examples, tooling, bug fixes)
  approval: one approving review from a CODEOWNER; GitHub blocks self-approval, so an author needs one
    of the other two
  source: https://github.com/ards-project/ard-spec/blob/main/README.md
code_owners:
- github_id: rvguha
  name: R.V.Guha
  org: Microsoft
  role: author + code owner
- github_id: mindpower
  name: Junjie Bu
  org: Google
  role: author + code owner
- github_id: evalstate
  name: Shaun Smith
  org: Hugging Face
  role: author + code owner
bodies: []
charter: null
cla: null
participant_roster: null
meeting_minutes: null
adr_ledger:
  count: 9
  accepted: 8
  superseded: 1
  records:
  - id: '0001'
    title: 'ADR-0001: Registry Introspection and Telemetry via `/explore`'
    status: Superseded by ADR-0005
  - id: '0002'
    title: 'ADR-0002: Registry Search API Pagination'
    status: Accepted
  - id: '0003'
    title: 'ADR-0003: URN Placeholder Naming Alignment with RFC 2606'
    status: Accepted
  - id: '0004'
    title: 'ADR-0004: Exclusion of Complex EBNF Filters and Sorting from the Search API'
    status: Accepted
  - id: '0005'
    title: 'ADR-0005: Registry Shared Query Model and POST /explore Endpoint'
    status: Accepted (Implemented in v0.5.0)
  - id: '0006'
    title: 'ADR-0006: Search API Federation Parameter Placement'
    status: Accepted (Implemented in v0.5.0)
  - id: '0007'
    title: 'ADR-0007: URN Naming Pattern Flexibility and Underscore Support'
    status: Accepted
  - id: 0008
    title: 'ADR-0008: Renaming MCP Media Type to application/mcp-server-card+json'
    status: Accepted
  - id: 0009
    title: 'ADR 0009: URN Namespace Identifier (NID) Length and Transition to "air"'
    status: Accepted
observed_inconsistencies:
- what: conformance tool cites an ADR that does not contain the decision
  detail: conformance-test v0.5.0 rejects a root `collections` array with 'Top-level collections were
    REMOVED in ADR-0003'. ADR-0003 is about RFC 2606 placeholder domains and says nothing about collections;
    no ADR in the repo mentions collections at all.
  consequence: two of the nine publishers found in the wild fail conformance on this rule alone, including
    one of the project's own reference implementations
- what: docs site still documents a field the tool rejects
  detail: the AI Catalog Standard page lists top-level `collections` as 'Links to sub-catalogs' while
    the conformance tool treats its presence as a critical error
- what: publishing guide contradicts ADR-0008
  detail: the copy-pasteable template in how_to_publish uses `application/mcp-server+json`; ADR-0008 renamed
    the type to `application/mcp-server-card+json`, and the project's own conformance tool warns on the
    guide's own template
- what: three DNS conventions across two documents
  detail: spec §6.1 specifies SVCB at `_index._agents.<domain>` citing DNS-AID; how_to_publish specifies
    TXT at `_catalog._agents.<domain>` and SRV at `_search._agents.<domain>`
- what: version strings do not agree across artifacts
  detail: spec/ard.md declares v0.9 (Draft), the OpenAPI title and the conformance CLI both declare 0.5.0,
    and ADR-0005/0006 record decisions as 'Implemented in v0.5.0'; GitHub carries zero releases and zero
    tags