Methods and systems may involve identifying metadata associated with a local application, and using an operating system-independent chat protocol to pass the metadata to a remote application. The metadata may include information to be presented to a user of a device executing the remote application, information to be used to locate more information for presentation to the user of the other device, information to be used to coordinate operation of multiple devices, and so forth. In one example, the metadata is passed using a protocol such as XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol).