Toward an Agent-Native Internet: A Foundational Infrastructure Hypothesis for Near-Zero-Cost Autonomous AI…

Abstract

Autonomous artificial intelligence agents use a network whose transport protocols already support

machines, but whose dominant web interfaces often organize discovery, authentication and interaction

around human users. An agent can therefore incur inference and tool costs even when a service charges

no access fee.

This hypothesis paper asks whether an application-level infrastructure organized around

autonomous participation can reduce that incremental visiting-agent burden toward zero without

administrative control of the visitor's runtime. It separates three objectives: zero additional model

inference for bounded operations, near-zero direct visitor charges, and sustainable provision of the

underlying services. A historical and technical review situates the proposal within web architecture,

earlier agent communication systems, semantic services and current agent protocols. Existing work

already supplies many relevant mechanisms; the proposed contribution is a cost-accounting framework

and a falsifiable evaluation of their integration with evidence-bearing operational knowledge. A

requirements taxonomy relates identity, authorization, discovery, verification, execution, allocation,

recovery and governance to existing work. Conditional models identify runtime and fallback limits,

verification break-even conditions and the capacity boundaries of free services.

The analysis recognizes that external infrastructure cannot override native execution policies. A controlled, cross-runtime

experimental design compares browser interaction, conventional APIs, optimized agent interfaces and

progressively integrated configurations. Open Door Agents is described briefly as an ongoing

experimental setting. No new experimental results or demonstration of near-zero participation cost are

reported. Whether a distinct infrastructure model outperforms an optimized composition of existing

standards remains an empirical question.

Keywords: autonomous agents; internet architecture; web interoperability; inference efficiency; shared

operational knowledge; cost accounting; experimental systems research

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{brown2026toward,
  title = {{Toward an Agent-Native Internet: A Foundational Infrastructure Hypothesis for Near-Zero-Cost Autonomous AI Participation}},
  author = {Antoine Lee Brown},
  howpublished = {Zenodo},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23665923},
  url = {https://zenodo.org/records/23665923},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Toward an Agent-Native Internet: A Foundational Infrastructure Hypothesis for Near-Zero-Cost Autonomous AI Participation
AU  - Antoine Lee Brown
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/26
PB  - Zenodo
DO  - 10.5281/zenodo.23665923
UR  - https://zenodo.org/records/23665923
AB  - Autonomous artificial intelligence agents use a network whose transport protocols already support  machines, but whose dominant web interfaces often organize discovery, authentication and interaction  around human users. An agent can therefore incur inference and tool costs even when a service charges  no access fee.  This hypothesis paper asks whether an application-level infrastructure organized around  autonomous participation can reduce that incremental visiting-agent burden toward zero without  administrative control of the visitor's runtime. It separates three objectives: zero additional model  inference for bounded operations, near-zero direct visitor charges, and sustainable provision of the  underlying services. A historical and technical review situates the proposal within web architecture,  earlier agent communication systems, semantic services and current agent protocols. Existing work  already supplies many relevant mechanisms; the proposed contribution is a cost-accounting framework  and a falsifiable evaluation of their integration with evidence-bearing operational knowledge. A  requirements taxonomy relates identity, authorization, discovery, verification, execution, allocation,  recovery and governance to existing work. Conditional models identify runtime and fallback limits,  verification break-even conditions and the capacity boundaries of free services.  The analysis recognizes that external infrastructure cannot override native execution policies. A controlled, cross-runtime  experimental design compares browser interaction, conventional APIs, optimized agent interfaces and  progressively integrated configurations. Open Door Agents is described briefly as an ongoing  experimental setting. No new experimental results or demonstration of near-zero participation cost are  reported. Whether a distinct infrastructure model outperforms an optimized composition of existing  standards remains an empirical question.  Keywords: autonomous agents; internet architecture; web interoperability; inference efficiency; shared  operational knowledge; cost accounting; experimental systems research
ER  -

Abstract

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