# Agent Context Interchange Protocol ACIP

[3 · Permit](/category/permit/)
Candidate · auto-drafted, unreviewed · confidence 80%

| Agent Context Interchange Protocol |
| --- |
| Category | [Permit](/category/permit/) |
| Governed by | Individual Internet-Draft, Network Working Group; not adopted by an IETF working group |
| Status | Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Informational; expires 15 April 2027; work in progress |
| Phase | draft |
| Implementation | unknown |
| Adoption | unmeasured |
| Version | draft-agarwal-acip-00 (2026-10-12) |
| Specification | [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-agarwal-acip-00](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-agarwal-acip-00) |
| Found at | .agents/agent-context.yaml |
| Last checked | 2026-10-18 |
| Freshness | current · checked 2026-10-18 |
| Solves | Let agents act on my website, Audit what an agent did, Describe an agent's capabilities |

Agent Context Interchange Protocol (ACIP) is an agentic-web standard (document format) at step 3, Permit, governed by Individual Internet-Draft, Network Working Group; its own status is "Internet-Draft, Intended Status: Informational; expires 15 April 2027; work in progress" (draft). It answers: How can a coding-agent host resolve organization, project, task, user, and vendor instruction sources into one deterministic set of rules with defined precedence, path scoping, enforceability, and an audit receipt? Adoption is unmeasured, last verified 2026-10-18.

[Permit](/category/permit/) ACIP is an individual Internet-Draft (Informational) defining a YAML policy file, agent-context.yaml, and a host resolution procedure for persistent instructions given to coding agents. It ranks organization, project, task, user, and vendor sources by host-determined provenance and applies path-scoped rules. It separates enforceable constraints from textual directives and preferences, and it defines a resolution receipt. It also specifies compatibility with AGENTS.md and Agent Skills, plus migration profiles for tools without native support. It states that natural-language instructions cannot force behavior and that enforcement requires a host control at the action boundary.

## Discovery and probe

Fixed repository path (.agents/agent-context.yaml and .agents/policies/) plus a user-level config path; organization policy via a host-specific managed channel · .agents/agent-context.yaml

```
GET .agents/agent-context.yaml
parse:     Parse as a single YAML 1.2 document and check that it validates against the ACIP top-level members. Only applies to public repositories; file is in the repository, not the site root.
on absent: Treat ACIP as not supported by that repository
```

Not probed live: no-fixed-path. candidate record; probe rule pending

## History
- 2026-10-16 — auto-drafted candidate from exa (https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-agarwal-acip-00)

## Instances

No instances recorded yet.

## See also

## References

- Internet-Draft defines ACIP, a YAML-based format and host-resolution behavior for coding-agent context sources, with source precedence, file matching, constraint/directive/preference distinctions, and a resolution receipt. — [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-agarwal-acip-00](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-agarwal-acip-00) (2026-10-12) REPORTED

[JSON](/data/protocols/acip.json) · [Markdown](/protocols/acip/index.md)