Agent Registry
A centralized directory that catalogs every AI agent operating within a system, assigns each one a verifiable identity, and tracks what each agent is authorized to do.
What It Is
Think of an agent registry the way you think of a corporate directory, except instead of listing employees and their job titles, it lists every AI agent running inside an enterprise and the specific tasks each one is permitted to perform. When Google announced its Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform at Cloud Next 2026, the agent registry was one of the four core components. The registry assigns each agent a cryptographic identity, a signed credential similar to a security certificate, so other systems can verify the agent before granting it access to data or tools.
Why It Matters
Without a registry, an enterprise deploying dozens or hundreds of agents has no reliable way to answer the most basic governance question: what is acting on our behalf, and with what authority? The problem scales poorly by hand. A company might run two or three agents and track them in a spreadsheet. At enterprise scale, an organization could be running agents for contract review, customer service routing, marketing copy, code review, financial reconciliation, and supply chain monitoring simultaneously. Each agent can call external tools, access internal databases, and trigger downstream processes. A registry makes the full population visible, searchable, and auditable. The cryptographic identity component closes the verification gap in multi-agent workflows, where one agent delegates to a second, which delegates to a third. Without identity verification at each step, there is no way to confirm whether the agent making a request is actually the agent it claims to be.
In Practice
For operators evaluating agentic platforms, the presence or absence of a registry is a meaningful signal about how seriously a vendor has thought through enterprise governance. An agent that cannot be identified, tracked, and revoked on demand is not an enterprise tool. It is a liability with an API. When comparing platforms from Google (Gemini Enterprise), OpenAI (Workspace Agents), Anthropic (Claude Cowork), and Salesforce (Agentforce), check how each one answers three questions: can you see every agent running under your account, can you assign each one a scoped identity with specific permissions, and can you revoke any agent instantly across all integrations. Vendors that cannot answer yes to all three are not ready for governed enterprise deployment, regardless of model quality.