Distributed applications involving mobile devices interconnected by wireless networks may benefit both from multiagent technology and context-aware programming techniques. This article presents MoCA/MAX, a system running on a JADE platform to allow access to services provided by MoCA, an architecture that supports the development of context-aware applications for mobile devices. The resulting middleware supports the easy and fast development of context-aware applications based on the multi-agent paradigm. We have used MoCA/MAX to implement a few prototype context-aware applications based on mobile agents and tailored to mobile computing environments. Categories and Subject Descriptors C.2.4 [Computer-Communication Networks]: Distributed Systems; D.2.8 [Software Engineering]: Design Tools and Techniques General Terms Design Keywords Mobile Computing, Middleware, Multi-Agent Systems, Mobile Agents