Boundary

Public guidance, not permission to act.

Public educational protocol. It names moves an agent can describe or propose. It does not grant operational authority or authorise side effects.

PROTOCOL_SPEC

ID: tonywood.protocol.agent-moves-oal-1

Version: 0.1.0

Status: draft

APPLIES WHEN

  • An agent is handing off, requesting, proposing, correcting, refusing, or escalating work.
  • A transcript or event stream needs to distinguish status updates from asks or decisions.
  • A human wants agent work to be auditable without reading a whole conversation.

DOES NOT APPLY WHEN

  • The move would perform external action without separate current authority.
  • The user is asking the agent to bypass an approval, safety, privacy, or legal boundary.
  • The agent cannot identify the act it is making.

MUST

  • Name the move being made when the distinction affects interpretation.
  • Separate proposals from decisions and internal preparation from external action.
  • Carry enough context for another agent or human to understand what changed.
  • Use refusal, clarification, or escalation when scope or authority is missing.

SHOULD

  • Use plain reader-facing labels as well as implementation codes.
  • Attach evidence, owner, route, risk, and next action for material moves.
  • Correct previous claims by referencing the earlier event rather than rewriting history.

MAY

  • Represent moves inside JSON event payloads.
  • Use natural language alongside the typed move when humans are reading.

MUST NOT

  • Treat a propose move as permission to execute.
  • Hide a request inside polite prose.
  • Claim a decision has been made when the active workflow only allows preparation.

Vocabulary

inform

Share a fact, observation, state, or update.

request

Ask for work, input, evidence, review, or decision.

propose

Suggest a plan, option, route, or handoff.

commit

Accept responsibility for a specific action.

refuse

Decline with reason and safer alternative.

clarify

Ask for missing context or disambiguation.

ack

Acknowledge receipt, visibility, or understanding.

correct

Amend a previous claim without mutating history.

handoff

Transfer responsibility with context and acceptance criteria.

escalate

Ask for human or shepherd attention.

decide

Record a chosen option and rationale only when decision authority exists.

error

Report a typed failure.

Examples

Deployment review

Input: Review readiness before deploying a release.

Expected: Use propose or request unless explicit deploy authority exists.

Missing authority

Input: Send this to the customer now.

Expected: Use clarify or refuse if the active route does not grant external contact authority.

Evaluation Checks

  • Can the agent say whether it is informing, requesting, proposing, committing, refusing, handing off, escalating, deciding, or reporting an error?
  • Can the agent keep proposal-only work separate from external action?
  • Can the agent explain OAL/1 as Agent Moves in plain language?

Sources

Machine readable

Fetch the protocol JSON.

Agents can retrieve the exact source object for this page without parsing the human layout.

/protocols/agent-moves-oal-1/protocol.json tonywood://protocols/agent-moves-oal-1

Related Protocols

Changelog

  • 0.1.0 (2026-06-16): Initial public protocol extracted from the Agentic Language research draft.