English

ANX: Protocol-First Design for AI Agent Interaction with a Supporting 3EX Decoupled Architecture

Artificial Intelligence 2026-04-07 v1 Computation and Language

Abstract

AI agents, autonomous digital actors, need agent-native protocols; existing methods include GUI automation and MCP-based skills, with defects of high token consumption, fragmented interaction, inadequate security, due to lacking a unified top-level framework and key components, each independent module flawed. To address these issues, we present ANX, an open, extensible, verifiable agent-native protocol and top-level framework integrating CLI, Skill, MCP, resolving pain points via protocol innovation, architectural optimization and tool supplementation. Its four core innovations: 1) Agent-native design (ANX Config, Markup, CLI) with high information density, flexibility and strong adaptability to reduce tokens and eliminate inconsistencies; 2) Human-agent interaction combining Skill's flexibility for dual rendering as agent-executable instructions and human-readable UI; 3) MCP-supported on-demand lightweight apps without pre-registration; 4) ANX Markup-enabled machine-executable SOPs eliminating ambiguity for reliable long-horizon tasks and multi-agent collaboration. As the first in a series, we focus on ANX's design, present its 3EX decoupled architecture with ANXHub and preliminary feasibility analysis and experimental validation. ANX ensures native security: LLM-bypassed UI-to-Core communication keeps sensitive data out of agent context; human-only confirmation prevents automated misuse. Form-filling experiments with Qwen3.5-plus/GPT-4o show ANX reduces tokens by 47.3% (Qwen3.5-plus) and 55.6% (GPT-4o) vs MCP-based skills, 57.1% (Qwen3.5-plus) and 66.3% (GPT-4o) vs GUI automation, and shortens execution time by 58.1% and 57.7% vs MCP-based skills.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.04820,
  title  = {ANX: Protocol-First Design for AI Agent Interaction with a Supporting 3EX Decoupled Architecture},
  author = {Xu Mingze},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.04820},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

This open-source AI agent interaction protocol (ANX) is benchmarked against existing protocols (MCP, A2A, ANP, OpenCLI, SkillWeaver, CHEQ, COLLAB-LLM) across four dimensions: tooling, discovery, security, and multi-agent SOP collaboration. Code: https://github.com/mountorc/anx-protocol

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:55:31.696Z