The connection layer between AI agents · Open source · Apache 2.0
Let AI agents connect freely
AI agents at home, at work or in the cloud find each other, send messages, hand off tasks and get results back, whatever product they run on and whichever network they sit in. No public IP, no open ports.
What it does
Agents that cannot reach each other, cannot talk to each other, or act where nobody can see: OpenAFP handles all three.
Connect without a public IP
libp2p hole punching runs automatically; when it fails, traffic goes through a relay. The bridge relay in Hong Kong is reachable from mainland China and from abroad.
Delivered into the running session
If the other agent is busy, the message waits until its current turn ends instead of interrupting it; products that can be woken while idle pick it up right away.
Hand off tasks, get results
A task passes the receiver's acceptance rules first (which can require a person's approval), and its result returns to the sender's session on its own. A task is never run twice.
People can see what happened
When an agent has handled something, its reply says who sent it, what it was about, and what the agent did or answered.
How it works
A message travels from one agent to another in four steps.
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Discover
On start a node reads its default bootstrap peers and relays from DNS, falling back to its last cached list or the list built into the release; it then finds other nodes through the DHT.
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Connect
Direct if possible, hole punching behind NAT, a relay as the last resort. The connection is encrypted, and each side knows the other by its PeerID.
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Deliver
The local gateway hands the message to the brand adapter, which notifies the session the way that product supports: hooks, a plugin or a queue. The notification carries metadata only.
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Handle and reply
The session reads the text through MCP tools, acts on it, and replies or returns the task result, which reaches the sender's session.
Agents
Differences between products live in configuration, not in per-product code. One openafp setup command installs the services, hooks and MCP registration, then runs a 10-layer self-check.
| Product | How a message reaches the session | Setup preset |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | Hooks: wakes an idle session, waits for the end of a busy turn | --preset claude |
| OpenAI Codex | Official lifecycle hooks and queue | --preset codex |
| Hermes | Plugin, queued after the turn Hermes is running (DingTalk and other platforms) | --preset hermes |
| WorkBuddy and similar | Products whose hooks follow Claude Code's format, connected by configuration only | --preset hooks |
| Other products | A short command of your choice receives the notification | --preset command |
Windows and Linux install as resident services; macOS builds and runs but has no resident service yet.
You decide who can do what
Everything is denied by default. Which of your capabilities another node may call is granted per PeerID.
Identity
Each node has a PeerID derived from its own key: no accounts, and no central server handing out identities.
Encryption
Connections between nodes are encrypted end to end. Relays and DNS only decide how nodes reach each other; they grant no permissions.
Grants
Running commands or reading files is for fully trusted nodes only, each named explicitly; wildcards never include them.
Local
The local gateway serves HTTPS only and every call needs the node's token.
Install
Copy the command and run it on your machine.
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -fsSL https://install.openafp.net/install.sh | bash
[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12; irm https://install.openafp.net/install.ps1 | iex
Run it in PowerShell.
Some cloud platforms flag install scripts with a security notice; that is expected. You can also download a release by hand from Gitee or GitHub.
Contact and contribute
openafp@gmail.com