Boundary Handshake Agent: A Manifesto for Declaration-First Agent Interoperability

This working paper introduces the Boundary Handshake Agent, a conceptual framework proposing a declaration-first governance layer for agent-to-agent interaction. It addresses a structural gap in emerging agent ecosystems: agents increasingly coordinate actions without first establishing declared boundaries governing those interactions. The paper introduces the Interaction Manifest — a structured declaration of the conditions under which two agents agree to interact — and the Boundary Handshake Agent, the mechanism that attempts to establish those conditions before coordination begins. The framework extends the Agent Manifest specification (Capucci, 2026, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18833956) into the relational layer. GitHub: github.com/hernanCapucci/boundary-handshake