Specification

AACP v0.1-draft

Agent Action Compression Protocol. Status: Draft, not for production reliance.

1. Packet format

An AACP packet is a sequence of bracketed key:value tokens. Whitespace between brackets is ignored.

[KEY:value][KEY:value]...[AACP:0.1]

2. Required keys

KeyMeaning
TASKAction verb. e.g. FETCH, APPROVE, REVIEW, DRAFT.
DOMDomain context. HR, FIN, LEGAL, IT, SALES, CS.
RETURNIdentifier of the agent or role the response goes to.
AACPProtocol version. Warning if absent.

3. Common keys

Non-required, but widely used: RES, PERIOD, FILTER, FIELDS, FMT, VENDOR, AMT, CCY, CC, PARTY, FLAGS, BASELINE, CUST, SENTIMENT, TONE, ISSUE, COUNT, TENURE.

4. Extensibility

Unknown keys are advisory warnings, not errors. Domain-specific keys are encouraged. Consider namespacing with a prefix (e.g. [ACME_INTERNAL:...]) for organisation-private semantics.

5. Compression boundaries

  • Coordination tokens: compress well. Routing, references, structural intent.
  • Task tokens: do not compress. The actual model work (read this contract, draft this email).
  • Emotional / relational context: compresses poorly. Use slow-mode for human-facing replies.

6. Version policy

Breaking changes bump the major. Additive keys are minor. Pin the version explicitly with the AACP key.

7. Licence

MIT. Use freely; contribute back if you can.

This page matches the README on github.com/MackayAndrew/aacp. Measured benchmarks published on the calculator page; additional workflows in progress.