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Protocol Specification

The Context Relay Protocol (CRP) gives every LLM call its own curated context window, so applications can reason over far more content than a single model invocation could otherwise hold - without losing facts, state, or auditability across turns.

CRP is a formal, language-neutral protocol for managing context across LLM invocations. This section covers the protocol's architecture, design decisions, and the patterns the SDK exposes through crp.SDKClient.

Specification Version

CRP v5.1.0 - the current shipping version. The canonical specifications live in SPECS_5_06_2026_CRP_v4/specs/. The older specification/ directory contains earlier research drafts and is retained for historical reference.

Protocol Architecture

graph TB
    subgraph "CRP Orchestrator"
        A[Session Manager] --> B[Security Manager]
        B --> C[Envelope Builder]
        C --> D[Dispatch Router]
        D --> E[Continuation Engine]
        E --> F[Extraction Pipeline]
        F --> G[Quality Assessor]
    end

    subgraph "Knowledge Layer"
        H[Warm Store] --> I[CKF Graph]
        I --> J[Cold Storage]
    end

    F --> H
    C --> H
    D --> K[LLM Provider]

Core Concepts

Concept Description
Session A stateful interaction with accumulated knowledge
Window A single LLM invocation within a session
Envelope The context payload packed into each window
Fact An atomic unit of extracted knowledge
Warm Store In-session fact storage with rapid retrieval
CKF Contextual Knowledge Fabric - graph-structured persistent storage
Quality Tier Output quality assessment: S, A, B, C, D
Depth Query thoroughness: quick, standard, thorough, exhaustive
Safety Surface Unified registry of safety rules and coverage maps

Design Principles

  1. Axiom 9: Zero Output Modification - CRP NEVER modifies LLM output. The stitched result is exactly what the LLM generated, concatenated without alteration.

  2. Provider Agnostic - CRP works with any LLM through a standard adapter interface. No vendor lock-in. The SDK auto-detects OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ollama providers.

  3. Honest Quality Reporting - Quality tiers reflect actual output quality. CRP does not inflate scores.

  4. Security by Default - Every call runs through injection detection, PII scanning, and HMAC-chained audit logging. Results are surfaced in response.crp.

Sections