AI Registry for Agents (ARA)

ARA (pronounced: ah-rah) is a package registry and distribution system for AI development artifacts. It provides a standardized way to discover, share, and install reusable components that enhance AI assistants and development workflows.

ARA is a vendor-agnostic open standard — any AI coding tool can implement it, including Kiro, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, Windsurf, and others.

Package Types

ARA supports the following package types:

Type	Description
agent	AI assistant configurations with prompts, tools, and behaviors
mcp-server	Model Context Protocol servers that extend AI capabilities
powers	Bundles of MCP tools, steering files, and hooks
steering	Persistent project knowledge files that guide agent behavior
skill	Procedural knowledge via SKILL.md
context	Knowledge files, prompt templates, and reference materials
agents-md	AGENTS.md format for guiding coding agents

Use the optional platform field to declare tool-specific installation targets (e.g., "platform": "kiro").

Quick Links

• Vision - Understand the project goals and tenets
• ara.json Spec - Package manifest format
• JSON Schema - Validate your ara.json
• Registry API - HTTP API specification for registry implementations
• Security - Security guidance for implementers

Example ara.json

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ara-registry/spec/refs/heads/main/ara.schema.json",
  "specVersion": "1.0",
  "name": "acme/code-reviewer",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "AI agent for automated code review",
  "author": "developer@example.com",
  "tags": ["code-review", "automation"],
  "type": "agent"
}

Security

See CONTRIBUTING for more information.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License.