NPS-Release

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Neural Protocol Suite (NPS) — Protocol Specification

License Release NCP NWP NIP NDP NOP

Version: 1.0.0-alpha.11 Status: Proposed License: Apache 2.0

Copyright 2026 INNO LOTUS PTY LTD — LabAcacia Open Source

NPS (Neural Protocol Suite) is a purpose-built protocol family for AI agents and neural models — designed to replace the HTTP/REST stack with a semantics-first, agent-native wire protocol.

NPS Repositories

Repo Role Language
NPS-Release (this repo) Protocol specifications — authoritative source of truth for all SDKs Markdown / YAML
NPS-sdk-dotnet Reference implementation — frame codec, Memory Node middleware, NIP CA C# / .NET 10
NPS-sdk-py Async Python SDK Python 3.11+
NPS-sdk-ts Dual-format (ESM + CJS) Node/browser SDK TypeScript
NPS-sdk-java JVM SDK Java 21+
NPS-sdk-rust Async Rust SDK Rust stable
NPS-sdk-go Go SDK Go 1.23+
nip-ca-server NIP Certificate Authority — single-Docker self-hostable CA for issuing NID certificates C# / .NET 10 + PostgreSQL
nps-daemons Reference deployment binaries — npsd, nps-runner, nps-gateway, nps-registry (Layer 1 + Layer 2 of the standard NPS topology) C# / .NET 10

Naming note: nps-gateway is the current process-level Internet ingress daemon name. It is separate from the retired NWP Gateway Node logical role; CR-0001 replaced that role with Anchor Node and Bridge Node.

The .NET SDK ships the underlying CA library (LabAcacia.NPS.NIP); the standalone nip-ca-server repo wraps it as a deployable service. Five frozen reference ports (Python / TypeScript / Java / Rust / Go) live under that repo’s example/ directory.

The Layer-3 trust-anchor daemons (nps-cloud-ca and nps-ledger) live in the innolotus GitHub organisation as private repos and ship publicly with NPS Cloud GA (planned 2027 Q1+). For self-host CA needs today, use labacacia/nip-ca-server.

Why NPS?

Existing web protocols (HTTP, REST, GraphQL) were built for human browsers. AI agents consume them with significant overhead:

Problem Impact
Schema repeated on every response Token waste, increased latency
No native agent identity concept Bolted-on auth, no trust chain
Semantic interpretation left to agents Prompt complexity, hallucination risk
Single-request model No native streaming or task orchestration

NPS solves all four at the wire level: one-time schema anchors, Ed25519 identity baked into every hop, semantic annotations in the frame itself, and a unified DAG-based task frame.

Protocol Family

Protocol Analogue Version Summary
NCP — Neural Communication Protocol Wire / Framing v0.7 Binary frame format, dual-tier codec (JSON / MsgPack), streaming; max_concurrent_streams negotiation; QUIC stream mapping; rekeying protocol
NWP — Neural Web Protocol HTTP v0.13 Semantic request/response, AnchorFrame schema cache, Memory / Action / Anchor / Bridge nodes; SubscribeFrame §13 (CR-0006); NWM trust_anchors
NIP — Neural Identity Protocol TLS / PKI v0.9 Ed25519 identity, certificate lifecycle, CA, OCSP, CRL; ocsp_staple; OIDs 65715.2.2/2.3; RA three-tier enrollment
NDP — Neural Discovery Protocol DNS v0.8 Node announcement, signed records, GraphFrame §5 topology snapshot; §9 federation forwarding with loop detection
NOP — Neural Orchestration Protocol SMTP / MQ v0.6 DAG task orchestration, delegation, streaming results; AlignStream ack/NAK; saga compensation; webhook HMAC

Dependency chain: NCP ← NWP ← NIP ← NDP / NCP + NWP + NIP ← NOP

Documentation

Protocol Specifications

Document Description
NPS-0 Overview Suite overview — start here
NPS-1 NCP Wire format, frame header, encoding tiers
NPS-2 NWP Neural Web Protocol
NPS-3 NIP Neural Identity Protocol
NPS-4 NDP Neural Discovery Protocol
NPS-5 NOP Neural Orchestration Protocol

Reference Documents

Document Description
Frame Registry Machine-readable frame type registry
Error Codes Unified protocol error code namespace
Status Codes NPS native status codes + HTTP mapping
Token Budget CGN token budget specification
Roadmap Phase 0–4 development roadmap

Service Specifications

Document Description
AaaS Profile Agent-as-a-Service compliance profile (Anchor Node, Bridge Node, Vector Proxy Layer, L1/L2/L3 compliance)

Key Design Decisions

Decision Choice Rationale
Default port 17433 Shared across all protocols; frame type routes internally
Transport HTTP overlay + native mode Overlay: firewall-friendly; Native: low-latency
Schema ownership Node publishes AnchorFrame Node owns its data model; agents reference by id
Token metering CGN (Cognon) Unified cross-model metering unit
Primary signature Ed25519 Performance-first for high-frequency agent verification
Default encoding MsgPack (Tier-2) ~60% size reduction vs JSON in production
Default frame size 64 KB (EXT=0) Extended: 4 GB (EXT=1) for large payloads
Max DAG nodes 32 DoS prevention
Max delegation depth 3 Prevents infinite delegation chains
Max graph traversal depth 5 X-NWP-Depth upper bound
AnchorFrame TTL 3600 s Balances cache hit rate with schema freshness

Frame Type Namespace (Quick Reference)

Range Protocol Frames
0x01–0x0F NCP Anchor(0x01), Diff(0x02), Stream(0x03), Caps(0x04), Align(0x05, deprecated), Hello(0x06)
0x10–0x1F NWP Query(0x10), Action(0x11), Subscribe(0x12)
0x20–0x2F NIP Ident(0x20), Trust(0x21), Revoke(0x22)
0x30–0x3F NDP Announce(0x30), Resolve(0x31), Graph(0x32)
0x40–0x4F NOP Task(0x40), Delegate(0x41), Sync(0x42), AlignStream(0x43)
0xFE System ErrorFrame — unified error across all layers

See spec/frame-registry.yaml for the complete machine-readable registry.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution guidelines and the RFC process for breaking changes.

Issue prefixes:

Breaking changes to spec/ must open an RFC issue first.

License

Copyright 2026 INNO LOTUS PTY LTD

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for details.

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