Open Continuity Protocol
Download0.4 Working Draft0.4 Draft

Open Continuity Protocol

Context travels. Authority does not.

OCP is a protocol for moving useful context across AI systems while preserving provenance, scope, review state, omissions, and loss.

It defines what may be requested and delivered—and makes clear what never transfers: trust, acceptance, credentials, or permission to act.

Read the quickstart View specification 
{
  "ocp_version": "0.4",
  "schema_uri": "https://opencontinuity.org/schemas/0.4/context-request.schema.json",
  "type": "context_request",
  "correlation_id": "urn:uuid:bd6ee087-a8b4-450d-9f84-aa89b8b978c0",
  "purpose": {
    "code": "https://opencontinuity.org/vocab/purposes/plan-trip",
    "description": "Plan a ten-day trip using accepted lodging preferences."
  },
  "selectors": [
    {
      "layer": "context",
      "item_categories": [
        "statement"
      ],
      "sensitivity_max": "normal"
    }
  ],
  "views": {
    "context": "accepted",
    "evidence": "none",
    "artifacts": "none"
  },
  "retention": {
    "mode": "session",
    "legal_retention_may_apply": false
  },
  "processing_uses": {
    "task_use": "permitted",
    "model_training": "prohibited"
  },
  "delegation": {
    "mode": "none"
  },
  "status": "submitted"
}
JSONPurpose-bound OCP 0.4 excerpt

Illustrative excerpt from the checked-in positive fixtures. Walk through the complete exchange.

From declared purpose to reviewed continuity

Explore the architecture
  1. 01Declare

    The client identifies itself, its recipients, purposes, processing, retention, and security posture.

  2. 02Request

    A purpose-bound request selects the exact context layers and views needed for a defined task.

  3. 03Authorize

    A separate authorization decision approves, narrows, rejects, or expires the requested scope.

  4. 04Deliver

    A receipt binds the grant; a package carries only the authorized projection with explicit omissions.

  5. 05Review

    New understanding returns as a proposal. Accepted state changes only through an authorized review decision.

Continuity with receipts

OCP does not ask a receiving system to pretend it knows everything. It asks the system to say what it received, why it received it, what survived, and where authority stops.

Accepted context stays scoped

Acceptance is recorded by a review decision and applies only to the subject, purpose, space, and validity boundaries that were approved.

Evidence remains evidence

Source material, provider interpretations, and derived context keep distinct identities. Provenance never becomes truth by repetition.

Loss is a first-class result

Transfers and round trips disclose omissions, transformations, unsupported semantics, source dependencies, and downgrade effects.

Action authority is out of band

Context can inform a decision, but it cannot supply credentials, authorize a tool call, or confer delegated power.

Preserve history without collapsing its layers

The 0.4 package completes three interoperating profile families while leaving the nine-record core intact.

Conversation ProfileMessage DAGs, branches, redaction, typed inert content parts, and graph comparison.Artifact ProfileLogical works, representations, custody, retrievability, integrity, rights, and lineage.Provider Adapter FrameworkDeclared mappings, deterministic runs, source locators, drift behavior, and explicit loss reports.

The reference package is internally consistent.

Local checks cover 37 schemas, 32 positive examples, 45 intended-negative examples, 243 semantic vectors, 29 registry/OpenAPI/evidence gates, and 25 Portable AI History cases.

They do not establish implementation conformance. The evidence ledger identifies no system under test and records zero implementation passes or failures.

Inspect release status Download the package
Schema catalog
37 / 37
Positive / negative
32 / 32 · 45 / 45
Semantic vectors
243 / 243
Portable history
25 / 25
Independent systems tested
0

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