CRP™ Formal Specification¶
The Context Relay Protocol™ is defined by a family of 50 normative specifications that collectively describe the wire-level behaviour of CRP v5.1: the headers, envelope packing, continuation graph, Decision Provenance Engine, safety-policy directive language, multi-agent safety, audit trail, conformance levels, retrieval-integrity layer, cognitive state object, semantic task layer, and security / privacy properties.
This section is the authoritative reference and the anchor for international standards submissions (IANA, IETF, IEEE SA, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42).
Why These Specifications Matter¶
For implementers, the specs provide an unambiguous contract: every CRP-* header, envelope phase, continuation edge, and audit field is defined with normative language, ABNF syntax, and conformance tests. Two independent implementations that follow the same spec should interoperate without guesswork.
For customers and auditors, the specs are the evidence base. They map every CRP control to ISO/IEC 42001, the EU AI Act, GDPR, NIST AI RMF, and ISO/IEC 27001, so a deployment can be assessed against published criteria rather than opaque marketing claims.
For standards bodies, the specs are submission-ready modules: header fields for IANA, architecture and conformance for IETF, and quality / safety arguments for IEEE SA and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42.
How to Read These Documents¶
Each specification follows IETF RFC conventions:
- Normative keywords ("MUST", "SHOULD", "MAY") follow RFC 2119 / RFC 8174.
- Header-field syntax is expressed in ABNF.
- Cryptographic primitives (HMAC-SHA256, SHA-256) follow FIPS 198-1 and FIPS 180-4.
- Interoperability is governed by SPEC-014 (Conformance & Test Suite).
Document Index¶
| Spec | Title | Status | Standards-Track Anchor |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPEC-001 | CRP-SPEC-001: Core Protocol Specification | Draft | Architecture |
| SPEC-002 | CRP-SPEC-002: Header Field Specification | Draft | IANA HTTP Field Name Registry |
| SPEC-003 | CRP-SPEC-003: Context Envelope & Packing Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-004 | CRP-SPEC-004: Window Continuation & DAG Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-005 | CRP-SPEC-005: Decision Provenance Engine (DPE) Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-006 | CRP-SPEC-006: Safety Policy Directive Language | Draft | IETF Internet-Draft |
| SPEC-007 | CRP-SPEC-007: Session Token & State Relay | Draft | - |
| SPEC-008 | CRP-SPEC-008: Dispatch Strategy Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-009 | CRP-SPEC-009: Contextual Knowledge Fabric (CKF) Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-010 | CRP-SPEC-010: Regulatory Controls Mapping | Draft | NIST AI RMF / ISO 42001 / EU AI Act |
| SPEC-011 | CRP-SPEC-011: Audit Trail & HMAC Chain Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-012 | CRP-SPEC-012: Multi-Agent Safety Protocol | Draft | - |
| SPEC-013 | CRP-SPEC-013: GitHub Action & Scanner Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-014 | CRP-SPEC-014: Conformance & Test Suite Specification | Draft | IETF interop requirement |
| SPEC-015 | CRP-SPEC-015: Security & Privacy Specification | Draft | - |
| SPEC-016 | CRP-SPEC-016: Gateway Service Specification | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-017 | CRP-SPEC-017: Zero-CKF Mode & Progressive Activation | Draft | - |
| SPEC-018 | CRP-SPEC-018: Adaptive Intelligence Relay (AIR) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-019 | CRP-SPEC-019: Cognitive Quality Relay (CQR) & Reasoning Scaffold Protocol | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-020 | CRP-SPEC-020: Cognitive Load Distribution (CLD) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-021 | CRP-SPEC-021: Reasoning Orchestration & Self-Consistency (ROS) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-022 | CRP-SPEC-022: Parallel Execution Fabric (PEF) & Amplification Economics | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-023 | CRP-SPEC-023: The Amplification Boundary - Protocol Layering & Opt-In Capability Model | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-024 | CRP-SPEC-024: Coverage-Differential Retrieval (CDR) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-025 | CRP-SPEC-025: Coverage-Differential Graph Retrieval (CDGR) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-026 | CRP-SPEC-026: Semantic Quality Benchmark (SQB) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-027 | CRP-SPEC-027: Retrieval Integrity - Concurrency, Conflict Resolution & Recency | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-028 | CRP-SPEC-028: Multi-Horizon Context Model & Conversational Retrieval | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-029 | CRP-SPEC-029: Ephemeral & Tool Context (Tier E) | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-030 | CRP-SPEC-030: The Cognitive State Object & State Relay Protocol | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-031 | CRP-SPEC-031: The Semantic Task Layer (STL) - Positioning, Not Injection | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-032 | CRP-SPEC-032: Developer Experience & The Progressive Disclosure SDK | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-033 | CRP-SPEC-033: The Safety Control Plane & Inline Human-in-the-Loop | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-034 | CRP-SPEC-034: AI Safety Coverage Map & Checkpoint Lifecycle | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-035 | CRP-SPEC-035: Context Lifecycle & Access Tiering - The Storage Engine | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-036 | CRP-SPEC-036: CRP Scan Remediation Engine | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-037 | CRP-SPEC-037: The Unified Configuration - One File Governs Everything | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-038 | CRP-SPEC-038: Pluggable Storage Backends - Bring Your Own Store | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-039 | CRP-SPEC-039: Semantic Codebase Ingestion - CRP Scanning With CRP | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-040 | CRP-SPEC-040: CRP Comply - The Three-Layer AI Compliance & Governance Platform | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-041 | CRP-SPEC-041: Adoption & Ecosystem - Time-to-Value, Integrations, and Growth | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-042 | CRP-SPEC-042: CRP Comply v2→v4 Upgrade & Ecosystem Integration | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-043 | CRP-SPEC-043: The Gateway as Runtime Product & The Visual Console | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-044 | CRP-SPEC-044: The Authoritative Domain Agent | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-045 | CRP-SPEC-045: Session & Persistent Knowledge Learning | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-046 | CRP-SPEC-046: User-Defined Cognition - The Thinking Process Compiler | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-047 | CRP-SPEC-047: Monetisation, Payments & Account Linkage | Internal - withheld | - |
| SPEC-048 | CRP-SPEC-048: No-Code Governance via Scan, GitHub Connection & Result-Preserving Signup | Public draft | - |
| SPEC-HOSTING | CRP™ Hosting, Control & Data Architecture | Internal - withheld | - |
Reading Order for Reviewers¶
- IETF reviewers - read in order: SPEC-001, SPEC-002, SPEC-006, SPEC-014, SPEC-015.
- IANA reviewers - SPEC-002 contains all provisional CRP-* header registrations.
- IEEE SA / ISO reviewers - SPEC-001, SPEC-005, SPEC-010, SPEC-011.
- Implementers - SPEC-001, SPEC-003, SPEC-004, SPEC-008, SPEC-014.
- Auditors and regulators - SPEC-010, SPEC-011, SPEC-015.
Stability and Versioning¶
CRP follows semantic versioning. Breaking changes require a new major version and a new IETF Internet-Draft revision. The current version is v4.0.
Errata and editorial changes are tracked in CHANGELOG.md in the canonical repository.
Licensing¶
The specification text is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. The reference implementation code remains under Elastic License 2.0. The protocol itself - header names, ABNF, semantics - is open and free to implement. "Context Relay Protocol" and "CRP" are trademarks of Constantinos Vidiniotis (application pending).
Questions? Contact info@crprotocol.io or open an issue in the canonical repository.