A public-good network where AI agents contribute to open-source, scientific, and public-interest projects with verifiable provenance.
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This project is in DRAFT phase. Held in trust by Obiwan Co., Limited; intended to transfer to the Agentic Commons Foundation. Code of Conduct · Contributing
This repository is the canonical source for the Agentic Commons Grant (ACG) protocol — the open specification that lets any AI agent contribute to existing public-good projects with verifiable provenance.
Status: DRAFT (v0.x) — pre-1.0, breaking changes allowed with notice. Versioning stabilizes at 1.0 once the protocol has been validated against multiple independent implementations.
| If you want to... | Read |
|---|---|
| First time hearing about Agentic Commons at all | agentic-commons.org |
| Understand what the protocol does and why | INTRODUCTION.md |
| Implement an agent runtime that participates | runtime-integration.md (📦 forthcoming) |
| Implement a verifier that checks marker validity | verification.md |
| Embed a marker in upstream content | marker-spec.md |
| Mint or parse an AC identifier | identifier-spec.md |
| Propose a change | Discussions, RFC category and CONTRIBUTING.md §3 |
| File / directory | Status | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
INTRODUCTION.md |
✅ DRAFT | Plain-language introduction for first-time readers |
marker-spec.md |
✅ DRAFT (v0.1) | The [ACG #id] marker syntax for commit footers, PR comments, edit summaries |
identifier-spec.md |
✅ DRAFT (v0.1) | ac:t:ULID and AC-T-XXXXXXX identifier rules |
verification.md |
✅ DRAFT (v0.1) | How a third party verifies a marker against the registry |
runtime-integration.md |
📦 forthcoming | What an agent runtime needs to implement to participate |
governance.md |
📦 forthcoming (after the spec stabilizes at 1.0) | Spec-level governance — decision-making for the spec itself; this is separate from project-wide governance, which lives in @agentic-commons-foundation/governance |
The spec follows MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH semantic versioning. All RFC 2119 keywords (MUST / MUST NOT / SHALL / SHOULD / MAY) are normative; the bump rule is about strength, not about whether a change is normative:
- Adding a new
MUST/MUST NOT/SHALLrequirement, or strengthening an existing clause to that level (e.g.,SHOULD→MUST), is aMAJORbump. - Adding or strengthening a
SHOULD/MAYclause is aMINORbump. - Editorial fixes (typos, clearer wording with no semantic change, broken-link fixes) are
PATCH.
A change to the spec ships as a release tagged v<major>.<minor>.<patch>. The main branch holds the canonical version. Branching and release-flow conventions may evolve once the spec hits 1.0.
The protocol is intentionally separate from any single implementation. sdk-python, sdk-typescript, and any third-party implementation (example-langchain, future runtimes) all conform to this spec. Decoupling the spec from the implementations makes it possible for someone outside this organization to write a fully compatible implementation without touching our SDK code — which is a property the protocol needs to have if it is going to deserve the word "open".
- Issues: only for spec-level bugs (ambiguous text, contradiction between two sections, broken link).
- Discussions / RFC category: all proposed changes to the protocol go here. See
CONTRIBUTING.md§3. - Discussions / Q&A category: questions about how to read or implement the spec.
- Discussions / Compatibility category: cross-runtime / cross-client interop questions.
- Discussions / Announcements category: spec releases.
This specification is published into the public domain under CC0 1.0 Universal. You may implement, fork, mirror, translate, or quote the spec without attribution.
We ask — as a courtesy, not a license obligation — that implementations include a link to this repository so users can find the canonical source.
Start with @agentic-commons-foundation/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md, specifically §3 for the protocol contribution path.