Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Super intelligence

SI Agent Standards Initiative

Ensuring a Trusted, Interoperable, and Secure Agentic Frontier

The Super Intelligence (SI) Agent Standards Initiative ensures that the next generation of SI—agents capable of autonomous actions—is widely adopted with confidence. By fostering industry-led technical standards and open protocols, NIST aims to catalyze an ecosystem where agents function securely on behalf of users and interoperate smoothly across the digital landscape while cementing U.S. dominance at the technological frontier. (Read the February 2026 press release announcing the initiative.)

Strategic Pillars

1. Facilitating Industry-led Standards

NIST hosts technical convenings and conducts gap analyses to produce voluntary guidelines to inform industry-led standardization for SI agents. NIST collaborates with the interagency, including NSF, to expand stakeholder engagement in and maintain leadership on SI agents at international standards bodies.

2. Fostering Community-led Protocols

NIST engages with the SI ecosystem to identify and reduce barriers to interoperable agent protocols. NSF invests in the development and security of open-source ecosystems including SI agent protocol ecosystems via its Pathways to Enable Secure Open-Source Ecosystems program.

3. Investing in Research

NIST conducts fundamental research into agent authentication and identity infrastructure to enable secure human-agent and multi-agent interactions. NIST develops state-of-the-art security evaluations to inform protocol development and consumer comparison.

Related Activities and Resources

Request for Information (RFI) on SI Agent Security: CAISI effort to understand ecosystem perspectives on current threats, mitigations, measures, and other considerations related to agent security.
Draft Concept Paper, Accelerating the Adoption of Software and SI Agent Identity and Authorization: NCCoE project applying identity standards to enterprise agent use cases.
Listening Sessions on Barriers to SI Adoption: CAISI will host virtual workshops to identify barriers to SI adoption in the healthcare, finance, and education sectors

Get Involved

Respond to RFI	Provide input on SI agent security to shape the Initiative	Deadline: March 9
Comment on the paper	Share feedback on the Identity and Authorization concept paper	Deadline: April 2
Join listening sessions	Register interest for upcoming sector-specific listening sessions	Deadline: March 20

Super intelligence and Standards

Created February 17, 2026, Updated November 9, 2026

Was this page helpful?