Agent
https://publicschema.org/Agent
An entity that can act within a public delivery process: a person, an organization, or a software system. Agent is the shared supertype for actors that perform, publish, evaluate, decide, or execute. Actor-side references such as performed_by, evaluator, and publisher accept any Agent, letting the schema name the accountable party whether it is a named individual, an administrative body, or a piece of software. Agent is distinct from Party, which groups the entities that receive services (Person and Group). Person is the only concept that belongs to both hierarchies: a person can both receive services and perform them.
Evidence
Not yet found in mapped delivery systems.
No mapped delivery system carries an Agent supertype directly. The convergence case comes from standards bodies: W3C PROV-O, FOAF, schema.org, and FHIR all split the actor role across persons, organizations, and (in PROV and FHIR) software or devices. Agent gives those actor-side references a single honest range in the schema so that performed_by, evaluator, and publisher no longer have to sit on Party, which is reserved for receivers of services.
| Standard | Equivalent | Match |
|---|---|---|
| PROV-O | Agent | exact |
| W3C PROV-O prov:Agent is the direct equivalent: an entity that bears some form of responsibility for an activity. PROV's subtypes prov:Person, prov:Organization, and prov:SoftwareAgent align one-to-one with ours. | ||
| FOAF | Agent | exact |
| foaf:Agent is the canonical broad supertype for persons, organisations, and software. Our Agent hierarchy matches FOAF's structure. | ||
| schema.org | Person and Organization (sibling pattern) | |
| schema.org has no single Agent supertype; instead Person and Organization are sibling subtypes of Thing, and properties that accept either name both in their range. Our Agent captures the same intent under a named abstract. | ||
| FHIR R4 | Practitioner, Organization, Device (actor split) | |
| FHIR splits actors across Practitioner, Organization, and Device (plus PractitionerRole for role-qualified assignments). Our Agent is the supertype that covers the same ground; PractitionerRole-style reification is deferred. | ||
Referenced by this concept
- FHIR R4 Health Level Seven International (HL7), 2019
- FOAF FOAF Project, 2014
- Schema.org Schema.org Community Group (W3C)
- PROV-O World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), 2013