Industry Standards¶
SynthOrg aligns with emerging industry standards for agent-to-tool and agent-to-agent communication. This page describes the standards used and how they integrate into the framework.
Standards Overview¶
| Standard | Owner | Purpose | SynthOrg Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCP (Model Context Protocol) | Linux Foundation (AAIF) | Standardised LLM-to-tool integration | Tool system backbone |
| A2A (Agent-to-Agent Protocol) | Linux Foundation | Agent-to-agent communication | Future agent interoperability |
| Chat completions API format | De facto industry standard | LLM API | Via provider abstraction layer (LiteLLM) |
Model Context Protocol (MCP)¶
MCP provides a standardised interface for LLM agents to discover and invoke external tools. SynthOrg uses the official MCP SDK (mcp Python package) as the backbone of its tool integration system.
The MCP bridge subsystem (tools/mcp/) connects to MCP-compliant tool servers, discovers available tools at runtime, and exposes them through the same BaseTool interface used by built-in tools. This means agents interact with MCP tools identically to native tools, through the ToolInvoker with the same permission checking and sandboxing applied.
Key integration points:
MCPToolFactoryconnects to configured MCP servers in parallel and createsMCPBridgeToolwrappersMCPBridgeToolimplementsBaseTool, mapping MCP tool schemas to the internal tool interface- Result caching with configurable TTL and LRU eviction reduces redundant tool calls
Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A)¶
The A2A protocol defines how autonomous agents discover each other's capabilities and delegate tasks across organisational boundaries.
Within a single organisation, agents communicate over the internal message bus. For cross-organisation and cross-framework interoperability, SynthOrg ships an opt-in A2A gateway (inbound Litestar controllers under src/synthorg/api/a2a/, federation domain logic under src/synthorg/a2a/) that exposes capability discovery via a .well-known agent card and accepts delegated tasks from allowlisted peers. The gateway is the authorisation boundary: only peers on the connection allowlist may interact with it.
Chat Completions API Format¶
The chat completions API format has become the de facto standard for LLM interactions. SynthOrg accesses this format through LiteLLM, which provides a unified interface across 90+ providers that all speak this format (or are translated to it).
This means SynthOrg is not coupled to any single LLM provider. Switching between providers is a configuration change, not a code change. The provider abstraction layer handles request/response mapping, cost tracking, retries, fallbacks, and rate limiting transparently.