CRP™ Formal Specification¶
The Context Relay Protocol™ is defined by a family of normative documents. This section is the authoritative reference and the anchor for international standards submissions (IANA, IETF, IEEE SA, ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42).
The specifications below collectively define the wire-level behaviour of CRP v3.0 — the headers, envelope packing, continuation graph, decision-provenance engine, safety-policy directive language, multi-agent safety, audit trail, conformance levels, and security / privacy properties.
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 | Core Protocol | Stable | Architecture |
| SPEC-002 | Header Field Specification | Stable | IANA HTTP Field Name Registry |
| SPEC-003 | Context Envelope & Packing | Stable | — |
| SPEC-004 | Window Continuation & DAG | Stable | — |
| SPEC-005 | Decision Provenance Engine (13 Stages) | Stable | — |
| SPEC-006 | Safety Policy Directive Language | Stable | IETF Internet-Draft |
| SPEC-007 | Session Token | Stable | — |
| SPEC-008 | Dispatch Strategies | Stable | — |
| SPEC-009 | Contextual Knowledge Fabric | Stable | — |
| SPEC-010 | Regulatory Controls Mapping | Stable | NIST AI RMF / ISO 42001 / EU AI Act |
| SPEC-011 | Audit Trail & HMAC Chain | Stable | — |
| SPEC-012 | Multi-Agent Safety Protocol | Stable | — |
| SPEC-013 | GitHub Action & Scanner | Stable | — |
| SPEC-014 | Conformance & Test Suite | Stable | IETF interop requirement |
| SPEC-015 | Security & Privacy | Stable | — |
| SPEC-017 | Zero-CKF Mode & Progressive Activation | Stable | — |
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 v3.0.
Errata and editorial changes are tracked in CHANGELOG.md in the canonical repository.
Licensing¶
The specifications are published under the same Elastic License 2.0 as the reference implementation. 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).