| name | ossa-agent-authoring |
| description | Author and validate OSSA (Open Standard for Software Agents) manifests. Use when creating or editing agent manifests, validating against the OSSA schema, scaffolding new agents, generating agent-card.json, or publishing to a registry. Triggers on tasks involving OSSA YAML/JSON, agent manifests, agent-card, or agentregistry/arctl. |
OSSA Agent Authoring
Overview
Guidelines for authoring and validating OSSA agent manifests. Use the OSSA MCP server tools when available; otherwise use the OSSA CLI.
When to Apply
- Creating or editing
manifest.ossa.yaml or OSSA JSON manifests
- Validating manifests against the OSSA schema
- Scaffolding a new agent directory and manifest
- Generating
.well-known/agent-card.json from a manifest
- Publishing an OSSA agent to a registry (agentregistry/arctl)
MCP Tools (OSSA MCP server)
When the OSSA MCP server is attached (e.g. ossa-mcp in Cursor/Claude), use:
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|
ossa_validate | Validate a manifest file; returns errors and warnings |
ossa_scaffold | Create a new agent directory and default manifest |
ossa_generate | Generate agent-card JSON from a manifest |
ossa_publish | Publish to registry (or get instructions if not configured) |
CLI Fallback
From the project root or a path with manifests:
npx @bluefly/openstandardagents validate <path-to-manifest>
npx @bluefly/openstandardagents scaffold [name] -o .agents --with-prompts --with-tools
npx @bluefly/openstandardagents agent-card <path-to-manifest>
Manifest Minimum
A valid OSSA v0.4 manifest must have:
apiVersion (e.g. ossa/v0.4)kind: Agentmetadata.name (DNS-1123)spec.role or spec.prompts.system.template
Governance
- Use schema version matching the manifest
apiVersion when validating.
- For platform-specific validation (kagent, langchain, etc.), use the CLI
--platform flag or the MCP ossa_validate platform argument when supported.
Publish Path
To publish to agentregistry: use arctl publish when installed and configured, or POST the manifest and agent-card to the registry API. The ossa_publish MCP tool returns next steps when the registry is not configured.
