Governance
TCP/AP is developed in the open. The specification, the reference Kernel, and the objects built on top of it are meant to be implemented, verified, and extended by anyone, not just its steward.
This page describes how the protocol is stewarded, what the community builds on it, and how it changes. It is deliberately light: the protocol is young, and the process should not be heavier than the thing it governs.
Stewardship
TCP/AP is stewarded by TCPAP Global Infra AB, which holds the specification and the reference Kernel, and anchors trust through the Cognition Trust Layer, the protocol's root of trust.
OmnisensAI is the first implementer and maintains the reference Kernel and reference agent. Stewardship means the steward publishes the specification, runs the change process, and keeps the trust root, but conformance is a property of the artifact, not the vendor: any implementation that meets the specification is conformant, and any verdict is checkable by any party holding the conformance record.
What the community builds
The protocol defines a small set of objects. The interesting work is building and sharing them, and none of it requires permission from the steward:
- Agentic Protocols: content-hashed policy bundles (schema plus rules) that define what is admissible for a task, and the labels a Kernel may return.
- Switchboards: the routing graphs that walk an agent from objective to objective, evaluated as data rather than branched in code.
- Prompts: the perception half of an objective, versioned alongside the Agentic Protocol it feeds.
Because every object is content-hashed, a published Agentic Protocol or Switchboard can be pulled, its hash verified, and run without trusting whoever shared it. Over time these are meant to live in a shared, public library so common policies (invoice approval, security triage, CV screening) can be reused instead of rewritten. For now that library is the GitHub repository.
Roles
- Steward: TCPAP Global Infra AB. Holds the specification and the trust root, and has final say on what enters a release.
- Maintainers: review changes to the specification, reference Kernel, and reference agent, and shepherd proposals.
- Contributors: anyone who opens an issue, proposes a change, or publishes an Agentic Protocol, Switchboard, or Prompt. Most work happens here.
Changing the protocol
Changes are proposed and discussed as issues on GitHub. Anything that alters the wire format, the conformance rules, or the verdict codes is a specification change and moves through a short written proposal before it lands.
The specification marks each part as Frozen or Provisional. Frozen parts do not change in a way that breaks a conforming implementation; provisional parts may still move. Build on frozen parts freely, and on provisional parts with that in mind.
Licence and getting involved
The specification and reference implementation are open source under the licence in the repository, chosen to include an explicit patent grant so that adopting the protocol carries no patent risk.
Everything happens on GitHub for now: read the specification, file an issue, or open a pull request. If you build an Agentic Protocol, Switchboard, or Prompt on TCP/AP, share it there.