Technology Radar
While CLI-based coding agents excel at repo-wide implementation and workflow execution, developers still need inline access to agents within their IDEs for rapid code exploration, interactive bug fixing and context-aware editing. Traditionally, this requires individual IDE plugins, creating integration overhead and locking developers into specific editor-agent pairings. Agent Client Protocol (ACP) addresses this by establishing an open, standard boundary between AI agents and host environments, whether that’s VS Code, JetBrains, a terminal window or a CI/CD pipeline.
Much like the Language Server Protocol standardized language support across editors, ACP relies on JSON-RPC to define agent lifecycle and interaction primitives, including session creation and resumption, streaming updates, permission requests and cancellation. ACP complements existing interoperability layers: while the Model Context Protocol (MCP) handles agent-to-tool integration, ACP handles client-to-agent control, making the complete agent harness a swappable component.
