Agent-to-Agent and Agent-to-Payment Exploration with Ryan Booth

Why It Matters

A2A/A2P protocols could automate and secure talent matchmaking and payments, cutting hiring friction and enabling new agent‑driven business models.

Key Takeaways

• A2A enables structured communication between autonomous agents across platforms.
• A2P adds payment handling, linking agents to financial transactions.
• Open‑source portfolio builder showcases skills via agent‑driven chat interface.
• Marketplace prototype lets users list assets, discover talent without keyword search.
• Hosted on Cloudflare, the system is free but token‑budget limited.

Summary

Ryan Booth’s presentation dives into the emerging Agent‑to‑Agent (A2A) and Agent‑to‑Payment (A2P) protocols, illustrating how they can reshape knowledge sharing and transactional workflows. He outlines a personal, open‑source portfolio built on Cloudflare’s RAG services that lets users query his skill set through a conversational interface, and demonstrates how the same stack powers a nascent marketplace for assets and talent. The core insight is that A2A provides a structured, trust‑agnostic messaging layer, while A2P extends that layer to handle financial operations. Booth integrates these protocols with an MCP server to bridge chat‑client UX constraints, showing that agents can interact without direct human mediation. He also highlights practical challenges: fragmented infrastructure, limited search discovery, and the need for robust UX to avoid user friction. During the demo, Booth fielded a simple query about Nebraska’s capital, exposing spelling‑tolerance and RAG response limits, then switched to a terminal‑style agent view that pulls his portfolio data in real time. He mentions the Tokeru marketplace, a pre‑alpha platform where users can register their agent‑friendly profiles and list products or services, all under an open‑source license. If adopted, these tools could streamline talent discovery, reduce hiring overhead, and democratize access to specialized AI agents. However, the ecosystem remains early‑stage, requiring better indexing, advertising mechanisms, and scalability solutions before it can replace traditional platforms like LinkedIn or job boards.

Original Description

Ryan Booth presented his exploratory work on agent-to-agent (A2A) and agent-to-payment (A2P) protocols, focusing on their potential to revolutionize how knowledge is shared and communication occurs between AI agents. A2A provides a structured method for agents to interact, even across different infrastructures or without inherent trust, by managing communication structures more precisely than human-centric chatbots. A2P extends this by integrating transactional and financial details, enabling payment systems between agents, though its infrastructure is still developing. As a network engineer turned software developer and AI consultant, Booth specializes in "pathfinding" to understand the true capabilities of emerging technologies, encouraging open-minded thinking about future applications.

His primary project demonstrating these concepts is an agent-first personal portfolio, designed to distribute his professional information more effectively than traditional platforms. This interactive portfolio uses an embedded chatbot, powered by a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system hosted on Cloudflare, to respond to specific user queries about his skills and projects. The goal is to allow an individual's chat agent to find and retrieve relevant information, leading to more efficient engagement. Any interaction can be passed with full context to him, streamlining initial discovery calls and accelerating the connection process.

Booth is further developing this idea into a marketplace platform called Tokuru, which operates similarly to federated social networks like Mastodon. This platform allows individuals to deploy and manage their own agent-friendly portfolios, presenting detailed skill sets that go beyond what traditional sites can offer. The vision is to enable nuanced, natural language queries to match talent with needs, moving beyond simple keyword searches. While acknowledging challenges in user experience and agent discovery, Booth aims for this open source-aligned initiative to cut through hiring inefficiencies and better connect skilled individuals with opportunities.

Presented by Ryan Booth, Network Engineer. Recorded live in San Jose, California, on May 14, 2026 as part of AI Field Day 8. Watch all three Community Presentations at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/ai-field-day-8-community-presentations/ or visit https://TechFieldDay.com/event/aifd8/ to learn more.