> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.agentworldprotocol.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# AWP vs ACP

> Editors vs worlds — sibling protocols in the same genre.

The [Agent Client Protocol](https://agentclientprotocol.com) (ACP) standardizes communication between code editors and coding agents, the way LSP standardized language servers. AWP borrows deliberately from ACP's playbook — schema-first artifacts, capability-gated features, per-feature RFD stabilization — while covering a different boundary.

|                     | ACP                                            | AWP                                         |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- |
| Boundary            | editor ↔ coding agent                          | agent ↔ world                               |
| The "other side" is | a mind (the agent) serving a user in an editor | an environment enforcing physics and safety |
| Core exchange       | prompt turns, tool calls, diffs, plans         | observations in, typed intents out          |
| Time                | conversational turns                           | lockstep ticks or wall-clock streaming      |
| Data                | text/JSON content blocks (Markdown default)    | multi-modal binary streams + JSON control   |
| Human-in-the-loop   | permission requests, elicitation               | approval flow, takeover, shadow sessions    |
| Default transport   | stdio subprocess                               | local WebSocket, stdio optional             |

Both protocols assume the two parties share an environment: ACP spawns the agent beside the editor; an AWP agent connects to a world running beside it. The tell for which protocol you need: in ACP both parties are software minds cooperating on a codebase; in AWP one party is a world that the other inhabits.

They compose. An ACP coding agent can hold an AWP session to test the software it writes inside a simulated environment, and an AWP GUI world can host an editor an ACP agent drives. Where AWP carries human-readable content (approval descriptions, event summaries), it reuses MCP/ACP-style content blocks with Markdown as the default text format, so clients can render both protocols with one component set.