{
  "id": "tonywood.protocol.meaning-blocks-omb-1",
  "slug": "meaning-blocks-omb-1",
  "title": "Meaning Blocks / OMB/1",
  "shortName": "Meaning Blocks",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "status": "draft",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.tonywood.org/protocols/meaning-blocks-omb-1/",
  "summary": "A storage-facing meaning record for deterministic, reviewable normalisation while preserving raw prose as evidence.",
  "sourceResearch": [
    {
      "title": "Agentic Language: The Common Language Layer For Agentic Work",
      "url": "https://www.tonywood.org/white-papers/agentic-language-common-language-layer/"
    }
  ],
  "sourceAgentCanon": [
    {
      "title": "Agent Canon: Agentic Language Common Language Layer",
      "url": "https://www.tonywood.org/for-agents/agent-canon/agentic-language-common-language-layer/"
    }
  ],
  "authority": "Public educational protocol. It describes how meaning can be represented. It does not grant operational authority, create a trusted normalizer, or grant storage authority.",
  "appliesWhen": [
    "An agent move needs a compact canonical meaning record.",
    "The mapping from source message to meaning is deterministic, reviewable, and authorised.",
    "A system needs audit, search, handoff, or pattern promotion over repeated agent work."
  ],
  "doesNotApplyWhen": [
    "Natural language meaning is ambiguous or not safely normalised.",
    "The source evidence must be kept verbatim and no trusted normalizer exists.",
    "The record would expose private, client, financial, secret, or organisation-specific material beyond its authorised boundary."
  ],
  "must": [
    "Keep raw source prose or source reference available as evidence.",
    "Represent only meaning that can be traced back to a source.",
    "Include provenance, confidence, owner, route, risk, next action, success condition, and external action status when material.",
    "Mark proposal-only work clearly."
  ],
  "should": [
    "Prefer deterministic mappings from typed Agent Moves before normalising free prose.",
    "Use compact fields that support review and handoff.",
    "Preserve uncertainty rather than smoothing it away."
  ],
  "may": [
    "Store Meaning Blocks as JSON records.",
    "Attach warnings or review flags when confidence is low."
  ],
  "mustNot": [
    "Overwrite raw evidence with a summary.",
    "Normalize ambiguous natural language as if it were trusted fact.",
    "Promote private context into shared runtime patterns without review and scrubbing."
  ],
  "packetFields": [
    {
      "name": "source_language",
      "meaning": "The language or protocol the source event used."
    },
    {
      "name": "act",
      "meaning": "The typed move or speech act."
    },
    {
      "name": "subject",
      "meaning": "The work item, claim, decision, or route being discussed."
    },
    {
      "name": "claim_or_ask",
      "meaning": "The core assertion or requested action."
    },
    {
      "name": "evidence",
      "meaning": "Source references, observations, tool outputs, or prior decisions."
    },
    {
      "name": "confidence",
      "meaning": "How strong the meaning record is and why."
    },
    {
      "name": "risk",
      "meaning": "What could go wrong if this meaning is acted on."
    },
    {
      "name": "owner",
      "meaning": "The person, role, lane, or agent responsible for the next step."
    },
    {
      "name": "next_action",
      "meaning": "The smallest useful next step."
    },
    {
      "name": "success_condition",
      "meaning": "What good looks like for this step."
    },
    {
      "name": "external_action_status",
      "meaning": "Whether the work is proposal-only or authorised for side effects."
    }
  ],
  "examples": [
    {
      "name": "Proposal-only review",
      "input": "Review readiness before deploy.",
      "expected": "Store act=request, subject=deploy-readiness-review, evidence refs, owner, next action, and external_action_status=proposal only."
    }
  ],
  "evalChecks": [
    "Can the agent keep raw prose separate from canonical meaning?",
    "Can the agent avoid normalising ambiguous prose into false certainty?",
    "Can the agent explain OMB/1 as Meaning Blocks in plain language?"
  ],
  "relatedProtocols": [
    "agent-moves-oal-1",
    "agent-communication-packet"
  ],
  "changelog": [
    {
      "version": "0.1.0",
      "date": "2026-06-16",
      "note": "Initial public protocol extracted from the Agentic Language research draft."
    }
  ],
  "type": "protocol",
  "contentType": "protocol",
  "canonicalPath": "/protocols/meaning-blocks-omb-1/",
  "jsonUrl": "https://www.tonywood.org/protocols/meaning-blocks-omb-1/protocol.json",
  "resourceUri": "tonywood://protocols/meaning-blocks-omb-1"
}