Concepts

A2B: Agent-to-Business

A2B (Agent-to-Business) is the scenario where an agent safely and governably connects to an existing business system, acts on behalf of a real business subject, and uses business capabilities such as querying data, creating requests, updating state, or starting workflows.

A2B is not just tool calling. It includes:

business-side identity and authorization;
route and scenario boundaries;
capability declarations;
risk and approval intent;
audit trails and traceability;
signatures and invocation accountability;
the ability for the business system to remain the final authority.

Short form:

A2B = agents safely doing business work through existing systems.

ACC: Agent Capability Contract

ACC (Agent Capability Contract) is the capability declaration contract for A2B.

ACC answers:

Which business capability may be exposed to an agent?
Under which scope?
With what risk level?
Does it require an acting subject?
Does it require approval intent?
What should be redacted or audited?
What execution hints should a runtime respect?

ACC does not execute the capability. It declares the capability boundary.

Short form:

ACC is the capability contract for A2B.

Relationship

A2B is the category.
ACC is the standard contract.
Implementations turn ACC declarations into runtime behavior.

Adjacent Terms

Term	Meaning	Relationship
A2A	Agent-to-Agent collaboration.	Adjacent, not the same problem.
MCP	A protocol ecosystem for exposing and invoking tools.	Can be used with A2B, but does not define business governance by itself.
ACC	Capability declaration contract for A2B.	Defines portable business capability metadata.
ACC runtime	Any implementation that parses, validates, or enforces ACC declarations.	Runtime implementation, not the contract itself.

Recommended Messaging

Use:

ACC is the capability contract for A2B.

Avoid:

ACC is a product-specific configuration format.

Avoid:

Any implementation is the ACC standard.

The standard and the implementation should remain clearly separated.