This paper presents an approach for specifying an environment of software agents and Web services. Users in collaboration with software agents compose Web services into high-level business processes denoted by composite services. The participation of Web services in a composite service is based on several selection criteria such as the execution cost of a Web service and the location of the resources on which a Web service is performed. Prior to that selection, the specification approach puts forwards three levels: intrinsic, organizational/functional, and behavior. © 2005 IEEE.