The HMP v5.0 specification proposes a decentralized protocol for autonomous AI agents, arguing that current systems like AutoGPT and CrewAI are fundamentally centralized. Despite appearing as "swarms," they rely on a single orchestrator managing state and coordination. This limits their ability to interact with truly independent agents in a distributed environment.

HMP aims to solve this by creating a minimal interaction layer outside any agent's cognitive cycle. It doesn't standardize thinking or knowledge formats, instead using immutable "containers" as the core unit of exchange. This approach is compared to federated protocols like ActivityPub but focuses on coordinating autonomous cognitive agents without imposing a shared model.

The protocol is designed for asynchronous, store-and-forward communication, acknowledging that agents may be offline or unresponsive. It treats discovery as a preparatory step, not a commitment to collaborate. HMP is presented as a complementary layer for existing decentralized AI (DeAI) systems, providing the "language" for interaction between autonomous nodes.