A note on what is and is not a protocol. AAP and AIP are wire-format protocols; their specifications live at
/protocols/aap/specification and /protocols/aip/specification. CLPI is a governance layer documented in /concepts/. AEGIS — the cross-tenant defensive substrate that consumes AAP, AIP, CLPI, and Safe House outputs at runtime — is a runtime substrate, not a wire-format protocol. AEGIS does not have a /protocols/aegis/* specification; its surface is documented under /concepts/aegis and /concepts/protection-network.The twin protocol relationship
AAP is post-hoc verification. After an agent makes a decision, AAP records what happened (the AP-Trace) and checks it against what the agent declared it would do (the Alignment Card). This catches inconsistencies between declared and actual behavior — but only after the fact. AIP is per-turn assurance. During execution, AIP analyzes the LLM’s thinking blocks (Anthropic), thought parts (Gemini), or reasoning summaries (OpenAI) to detect active threats: prompt injection attempts, gradual value drift within a session, or manipulation by adversarial inputs. Inenforce, AIP gates the resulting response before it is delivered — catching problems before the agent acts on compromised reasoning; in observe and nudge the verdict is recorded post-hoc (nudge carries it into the agent’s next turn).
They complement each other:
- AAP catches behavioral drift over time that develops gradually across many interactions
- AIP catches active attacks in progress that compromise a single reasoning step
- AAP verifies declared vs. actual alignment across a session or lifetime
- AIP verifies reasoning integrity within a single inference call
What the protocols guarantee: AAP provides complete audit trails of every agent decision. AIP provides per-turn attestation of reasoning integrity at the thinking level — with cryptographic proofs (certificates, ZK proofs) that any party can independently verify. Combined with CLPI policy enforcement, Mnemom provides verifiable accountability from declared intent through execution.The boundary: No external system can enforce at the sub-thinking level — inside the model’s weights. If a model produces compromised reasoning that does not surface in its thinking blocks, no external observer can detect it. See the AAP limitations and AIP limitations for details.
How they work together
When deployed via the Mnemom Gateway, both protocols run automatically:Protocol layers
Mnemom’s protocols sit alongside existing agent infrastructure standards:
AAP and AIP do not replace MCP or A2A — they add a verification layer on top. CLPI adds a governance layer that prevents configuration drift, recovers from false violations, and anchors trust on-chain. An agent can use MCP tools, communicate via A2A, and have all of that activity traced and verified through AAP and AIP, with governance enforced by CLPI.
- MCP + AAP: Every MCP tool call can generate an AP-Trace. See MCP migration.
- A2A + AAP: Before two agents collaborate, value coherence checks verify compatibility. See A2A integration.
- CLPI + AAP/AIP: CLPI’s policy engine governs which tools are permitted, its reclassification system fixes false violations from AAP/AIP, and its on-chain layer anchors the resulting trust scores immutably. See CLPI overview.
Core concepts
Alignment Cards
Machine-readable declarations of agent identity, values, autonomy boundaries, escalation triggers, and audit commitments. The reference document that all verification checks against.
AP-Traces
Structured records of agent decisions. Each trace captures what action was taken, what alternatives were considered, what values were applied, and whether escalation was triggered.
Integrity Checkpoints
Per-turn AIP analysis results. Each checkpoint contains a verdict (
clear, review_needed, boundary_violation), identified concerns, and confidence levels.Drift Detection
Statistical analysis of agent behavior over time. Detects sustained deviations from declared alignment, including autonomy expansion, escalation rate changes, and value application shifts.
Value Coherence
Pairwise compatibility checking between two agents’ Alignment Cards. Identifies shared values, conflicts, and proposes resolutions before collaboration begins.
CLPI: Governance Layer
Card Lifecycle & Policy Intelligence. The 5-phase governance system that enforces policies, recovers trust after false violations, and anchors reputation on-chain.
Mnemom Trust Rating
Composite trust metric for AI agents — a credit score built from integrity checkpoints, drift stability, compliance, and fleet coherence. Publicly queryable, embeddable, and cryptographically provable.
Team Reputation
Teams as first-class meta-agents with persistent identity, their own alignment cards, accumulated reputation, and ZK-provable team trust scores.
Verifiable Integrity
Four-layer cryptographic attestation stack: Ed25519 signatures, hash chains, Merkle proofs, and SP1 zero-knowledge proofs for independent verdict verification.
Specifications
AAP Specification
Full Agent Alignment Protocol specification. Covers Alignment Card schema, AP-Trace format, verification algorithm, coherence checking, and drift detection.
AIP Specification
Full Agent Integrity Protocol specification. Covers thinking block analysis, checkpoint format, verdict mapping, signal building, and window management.
AAP Security Model
AAP threat model, attack surfaces, and mitigations. Covers card forgery, trace tampering, similarity gaming, and adversarial alignment.
AIP Security Model
AIP threat model and limitations. Covers thinking block suppression, adversarial reasoning, and confidence calibration.
SDK packages
Both protocols have SDK implementations in Python and TypeScript:Quickstarts
- Mnemom Gateway quickstart — Both protocols, zero code changes
- SDK direct quickstart — Full programmatic control
- AAP protocol quickstart — AAP SDK standalone
- AIP protocol quickstart — AIP SDK standalone