# A2A Task

> A stateful unit of work exchanged between agents in the Agent2Agent protocol.

- Category: Tools & Protocols
- Stage: Emerging
- Also called: Agent task, Protocol task
- Canonical: https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/a2a-task

## Plain English

It is the tracked job another agent is working on, with status updates and outputs.

## Example

A buying agent starts a task with a supplier agent, subscribes to updates, and receives the final quote.

## Why it matters

Tasks give agent-to-agent collaboration a lifecycle instead of making everything a one-off message.

## Related

- [Agent2Agent](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/agent2agent)
- [Artifact](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/artifact)
- [Handoff](https://www.joelcsaji.com/ai-dictionary/handoff)

## Sources

- [A2A Protocol Specification](https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/)