This paper focuses on design issues to be faced when developing knowledge management (KM)applications based on the integration of peer-to-peer and multi-agent technologies.The reasons for using these technologies rest on the requirements posed by the specific KM paradigm that has been adopted,which emphasizes aspects such as autonomy and distribution of knowledge sources.We adopt an agent-oriented approach that extendsTropos,a software engineering methodology introduced in earlier papers.We present a characterization of peer-to-peer in terms of a general architectural pattern,a set of design guidelines for peer-to-peer applications,and a framework that integrates multi-agent and peer-to-peer concepts and technologies.