AG-UI (Agent-User Interaction protocol)
An open protocol for streaming an agent’s messages, state, tool calls and approval requests to a frontend as one ordered stream of typed events.
MCP connects an agent to tools and A2A connects agents to each other; AG-UI covers the last hop, from the agent to the person using the app. Instead of a custom format per project, the backend emits standard events (text chunks, tool calls, state updates) over a stream such as SSE, and the UI renders them, including steps where the user must approve an action. It started at CopilotKit and has SDKs for TypeScript and Python.
Related terms
- Server-Sent Events (SSE): A standard way for a server to push a stream of updates to the browser over one long HTTP response.
- MCP (Model Context Protocol): An open protocol for plugging tools and data into AI apps: write a server once, use it from any client.
- A2A (Agent2Agent protocol): An open protocol for one AI agent to hand a task to another agent, possibly from another vendor, and follow it until it is done.
- Human in the loop: A person approves, edits or rejects the agent’s action before it takes effect.
