ACGP Specifications

The Agentic Cognitive Governance Protocol is defined through a series of RFC-style specification documents.

Specification Status

All ACGP specifications are currently published as Standard-only Alpha (v1.0.0-alpha.2) and under active development.

[WARNING] Living Specifications These specifications are being actively refined. Breaking changes may occur before stable v1.0 release.

Start here: If you are new to ACGP, read ACGP in 10 Minutes first. It explains the active alpha claim surface, the high-level runtime model, and the framing you need before entering the normative specs.

ACGP-1 owns architecture and terminology. ACGP-3 owns runtime evaluation ordering and policy semantics. ACGP-4 owns tripwire precedence and fail-closed rules. ACGP-6 owns claim semantics. ACGP-7 owns identity meaning and governance keying semantics.

Spec Ownership Map

  • ACGP-1 — entry concepts and glossary-level framing
  • ACGP-2 — message and payload semantics
  • ACGP-3 — evaluation flow, thresholds, blueprint resolution, trust-policy core semantics
  • ACGP-4 — tripwires, fail-closed semantics, tripwire-only halt
  • ACGP-5 — audit/privacy implementation controls
  • ACGP-6 — conformance claims, badges, and claim-level requirement surfaces
  • ACGP-7 — agent principal identity semantics

Where summary text in an earlier spec overlaps with owner-spec material, the owner spec controls.

Where To Go

  • Terminology, architecture, runtime overview -> ACGP-1
  • Wire protocol and message envelopes -> ACGP-2
  • Evaluation semantics, blueprint shape, CTQ, trust policy -> ACGP-3
  • Tripwire semantics and halt behavior -> ACGP-4
  • Audit, privacy, retention, integrity controls -> ACGP-5
  • Conformance claims and badge semantics -> ACGP-6
  • Governed principal identity and agent_id meaning -> ACGP-7

Conformance at a Glance (v1.0.0-alpha.2)

For v1.0.0-alpha.2, ACGP has one active external conformance story:

  • Standard is the active claimable profile
  • Regulated Controls Badge is additive
  • Dev Mode is non-conformant

v1.0 Core Bundle

The authoritative v1.0 specifications:

  1. ACGP-1: Core Concepts & Terminology — Architecture, terminology, profiles, topologies
  2. ACGP-2: Messages & Wire Protocol — Envelope, transport, retry, error handling
  3. ACGP-3: Blueprints, Traces & Evaluation — Policy schema, CTQ scoring, canonical EVAL outcome artifacts, and trust debt posture / review semantics
  4. ACGP-4: Tripwires & Safety Semantics — DSL grammar, fail-closed, precedence
  5. ACGP-5: Audit & Privacy Controls — Audit durability, privacy, evidence integrity
  6. ACGP-6: Conformance — Profile suites, badges, certification
  7. ACGP-7: Agent Principal Identity — Governed principal identity semantics for agent_id, agent_label, and principal-keyed governance state

Preview Extensions

Core v1.0 defines profile-failure fallback for Steward/session-path unavailability. Per-evaluation timeout policy remains part of the Runtime Governance Contracts preview track and is not part of the active Standard conformance claim.

Preview extensions are explicitly non-core for v1.0.0-alpha.2: they MUST NOT be required to claim ACGP v1.0 Standard conformance, and implementations that do not support them MUST treat their hook points as no-ops.

Preview Extension Notes

Extension Core boundary Current status Expected stabilization criteria
Source Catalog Optional source-trust hook only; core evidence validation still operates without it Draft, v1.1 preview stable schema, conformance vectors for source trust semantics, at least one interoperable implementation
Runtime Governance Contracts Preview-only governance_contract semantics; no effect on active Standard conformance claims unless a future extension suite activates them Draft, v1.1 preview clear timeout/fallback semantics, extension-specific vectors, interoperable implementations across at least two runtimes
Interoperability Adapters Adapter metadata is optional; native ACGP envelope remains authoritative for v1.0 Draft, v1.1 preview stable MCP/A2A mapping rules, losslessness criteria, adapter conformance fixtures
Advanced Trust Debt Core trust-debt model remains the v1.0 baseline; advanced decay/recovery is optional preview behavior Draft, v1.1 preview stabilized decay/recovery semantics, vector coverage, cross-SDK parity

When core specs reference these hook points, the reference is informative only unless the relevant preview extension is explicitly adopted.

Within the active alpha surface, EVAL is the canonical governance outcome artifact. Trust debt can tighten runtime posture immediately, ratchet the final intervention to escalate under restricted_mode, and independently require review.

JSON Schemas

Machine-readable schemas derived from the normative specs:

Reading Guide

For New Users

Start with ACGP in 10 Minutes, then continue into ACGP-1 and the concepts section.

For Implementers

  1. ACGP-1 → ACGP-2 → ACGP-3 → ACGP-4 → ACGP-6 → ACGP-7
  2. Then review implementation guides
  3. Review ACGP-7 for governed principal identity semantics and principal-scoped governance state

For Security Teams

  1. Protocol Boundaries
  2. ACGP-5: Audit & Privacy Controls
  3. Security Hardening Guide

Conformance (v1.0)

Claim Description
ACGP v1.0 Standard Conformant Alpha conformance — 100% of Standard suite

Badge suites are additive (e.g., Regulated Controls Badge). Dev Mode is a local development/runtime mode and is not claimable. See ACGP-6 for details.

Contributing

  1. Report issues — Open an issue
  2. Propose changes — Submit pull requests
  3. Join discussions — GitHub Discussions

See our Contributing Guide for details.

License

These specifications are licensed under CC-BY-4.0.