list_accounts

list_accounts returns all advertiser accounts an authenticated agent can operate on an AdCP vendor agent. Works across media buy, signals, governance, and creative protocols.

Returns all accounts the authenticated agent can operate on this vendor agent. Use this to discover existing accounts, check status changes on pending accounts, and retrieve account_id values for use in protocol operations.

For upstream-managed account namespaces, list_accounts is not optional discovery polish; it is the namespace discovery contract. The upstream platform owns the accessible account set, so buyers MUST resolve an explicit account_id before the first account-scoped request. If the authenticated credential can access more than one account, the seller MUST expose list_accounts; if it can access exactly one account, the seller SHOULD expose list_accounts returning that singleton so SDKs can auto-select it and still send { "account_id": "..." } on required-account calls. sync_accounts provisioning does not create account-id accounts in 3.0.x unless a future explicit capability declares that mode; if sync_accounts is exposed on these sellers today, use it only for settings updates against an account already identified by account_id.

list_accounts works across all vendor protocols — media buy agents, signals agents, governance agents, and creative agents all return accounts through this same task.

Response Time: ~1s.

Request Schema: static/schemas/source/account/list-accounts-request.json Response Schema: /schemas/v3/account/list-accounts-response.json

Quick Start

List all accounts this agent can operate:

JavaScript

import { testAgent } from "@adcp/sdk/testing";
import { ListAccountsResponseSchema } from "@adcp/sdk";

const result = await testAgent.listAccounts({});

if (!result.success) {
  throw new Error(`Request failed: ${result.error}`);
}

const validated = ListAccountsResponseSchema.parse(result.data);

if ("errors" in validated && validated.errors) {
  throw new Error(`Operation failed: ${JSON.stringify(validated.errors)}`);
}

for (const account of validated.accounts) {
  console.log(`${account.account_id}: ${account.name} (${account.status})`);
}

import asyncio
from adcp.testing import test_agent

async def main():
    result = await test_agent.simple.list_accounts()

    if hasattr(result, 'errors') and result.errors:
        raise Exception(f"Operation failed: {result.errors}")

    for account in result.accounts:
        print(f"{account.account_id}: {account.name} ({account.status})")

asyncio.run(main())

Request Parameters

All parameters are optional. An empty request returns all accounts visible to the authenticated caller. Use account when re-reading one known account by account_id or by natural key (brand + operator, optionally sandbox).

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
account	object	No	Exact account filter. Pass { "account_id": "..." } after discovery, or a natural key with brand, operator, and optional sandbox for buyer-declared account sellers. The seller returns only matching accounts visible to the authenticated caller.
status	string	No	Filter by account status: active, pending_approval, rejected, payment_required, suspended, or closed.
sandbox	boolean	No	When true, return only sandbox accounts. When false, return only production accounts. Omit to return both. Primarily used with account-id namespaces where sandbox accounts are pre-existing test accounts on the platform.
pagination	object	No	Pagination cursor for large account sets.

Response

Field	Description
accounts	Array of account objects (see below)
errors	Array of errors, if the request failed
pagination	Pagination cursor for the next page, if more results exist

Each account includes:

Field	Description
account_id	Vendor agent’s identifier. Pass this to protocol tasks: create_media_buy, get_signals, activate_signal, report_usage, and other operations. May be absent when status: "rejected".
name	Vendor agent’s display name for the account
brand	Brand reference object: domain (the brand registry house domain) and optional brand_id (sub-brand within the house)
operator	Operator domain. Always present — when the brand operates directly, operator equals the brand’s domain.
status	Current account state: active, pending_approval, rejected, payment_required, suspended, or closed
billing	Billing model in effect: operator or agent
account_scope	How the seller scoped this account: operator, brand, operator_brand, or agent. See account scope.
payment_terms	Payment terms agreed for this account: net_15, net_30, net_45, net_60, net_90, or prepay. Binding for all invoices when the account is active.
governance_agents	Governance agent endpoints registered on this account. Present when governance agents have been configured via sync_governance.
setup	Present when status: "pending_approval". Contains url for completing setup and message explaining what’s needed.
authorization	Optional. The calling agent’s scope grant for this account — allowed_tasks, field_scopes, scope_name, read_only. Applies to every vendor agent type (media-buy, signals, governance, creative, brand) — the Accounts Protocol surface is shared. Vendor agents that support scope introspection SHOULD populate this; media-buy sales agents claiming the attestation_verifier standard scope MUST populate it. Absence means the vendor agent does not advertise introspectable scope for this account; callers MUST NOT infer access from absence and fall back to error-driven discovery via the RBAC error codes. See Caller authorization for the full shape and semantics.
notification_configs	Account-level webhook subscribers registered via sync_accounts. Each entry carries subscriber_id, url, event_types[], and active. Present when the account has any persisted subscribers. subscriber_id is the account-scoped logical key; re-registering the same subscriber replaces that subscriber’s config. authentication.credentials is omitted on every entry (write-only). Use this surface to verify what’s active after a sync, audit fan-out across multiple subscribers, and detect drift between buyer-side expectations and seller-side persisted state. This is not an account lifecycle feed; account status changes are read from the account’s status field or from the one-shot sync_accounts.push_notification_config async result channel.

Single-publisher cardinality

A seller serving exactly one publisher entity MAY return that entity as the sole account on list_accounts responses, regardless of calling principal. The “Direct advertiser with single account” example in list-accounts-response.json is canonical for this case — a single-element accounts[] with no pagination envelope at all.

Pagination conformance requiring pagination.has_more: true does not apply when:

• pagination is absent entirely (canonical single-account shape), or
• pagination.total_count is present and ≤ 1

Runners SHOULD grade pagination-walk phases as not_applicable in either case. This pattern is conformant; the spec carries no minItems constraint on accounts[] and the single-account example is normative.

Common Scenarios

Poll until account becomes active

After sync_accounts returns pending_approval, poll until the account is ready:

JavaScript

import { testAgent } from "@adcp/sdk/testing";
import { ListAccountsResponseSchema } from "@adcp/sdk";

async function waitForAccount(targetAccountId, maxAttempts = 20) {
  for (let i = 0; i < maxAttempts; i++) {
    const result = await testAgent.listAccounts({ status: "active" });

    if (!result.success) {
      throw new Error(`Request failed: ${result.error}`);
    }

    const validated = ListAccountsResponseSchema.parse(result.data);

    if ("errors" in validated && validated.errors) {
      throw new Error(`Operation failed: ${JSON.stringify(validated.errors)}`);
    }

    if ("accounts" in validated) {
      const account = validated.accounts.find(a => a.account_id === targetAccountId);
      if (account) {
        console.log(`Account active: ${account.account_id}`);
        return account;
      }
    }

    // Wait 30 seconds before polling again
    await new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 30_000));
  }

  throw new Error(`Account ${targetAccountId} did not become active`);
}

import asyncio
from adcp.testing import test_agent

async def wait_for_account(target_account_id: str, max_attempts: int = 20):
    for _ in range(max_attempts):
        result = await test_agent.simple.list_accounts(status='active')

        if hasattr(result, 'errors') and result.errors:
            raise Exception(f"Operation failed: {result.errors}")

        account = next(
            (a for a in result.accounts if a.account_id == target_account_id),
            None
        )
        if account:
            print(f"Account active: {account.account_id}")
            return account

        await asyncio.sleep(30)

    raise Exception(f"Account {target_account_id} did not become active")

Filter active accounts only

JavaScript

import { testAgent } from "@adcp/sdk/testing";
import { ListAccountsResponseSchema } from "@adcp/sdk";

const result = await testAgent.listAccounts({ status: "active" });

if (!result.success) {
  throw new Error(`Request failed: ${result.error}`);
}

const validated = ListAccountsResponseSchema.parse(result.data);

if ("accounts" in validated) {
  for (const account of validated.accounts) {
    console.log(`${account.account_id}: ${account.name} — billing: ${account.billing}`);
  }
}

import asyncio
from adcp.testing import test_agent

async def main():
    result = await test_agent.simple.list_accounts(status='active')

    if hasattr(result, 'errors') and result.errors:
        raise Exception(f"Operation failed: {result.errors}")

    for account in result.accounts:
        print(f"{account.account_id}: {account.name} — billing: {account.billing}")

asyncio.run(main())

Error Handling

Error Code	Description	Resolution
ACCOUNT_NOT_FOUND	No accounts found for this agent	Run sync_accounts first to establish a buying relationship

Next Steps

• sync_accounts — Sync advertiser accounts with a seller
• sync_governance — Sync governance agents to accounts
• Accounts and agents — Billing models, trust models, and authorized operators
• Brand protocol — How vendor agents resolve brand identity from the brand’s domain