A202 / v0.1
When an agent says yes, prove what it means.
Verifiable Agreement Protocol for Agent-Led Commerce
A202 gives independent organizations one checkable language for authority, offers, approvals, disclosure, commitment, and the evidence left behind.
The common ground
A deal is more than a message. It is a chain of authority, state, and acceptance.
Messages move quickly. Commercial meaning does not. A202 makes the facts both organizations must agree on explicit, signed, and independently checkable.
Spoken “A two-oh-two.” The number refers to HTTP 202 Accepted, because acceptance is the primitive the specification builds on.
01
Signed actions
Offers, approvals, awards, revocations, and commitments identify their author, context, creation time, content hash, and signatures.
02
Versioned state
A new object points to the one it replaces. The current state stays explicit while every earlier version remains verifiable.
03
Portable evidence
Either organization can replay the signed sequence without depending on the other party's internal system or the original interface.
One agreement, end to end
01 / Propose
An agent proposes an agreement.
A buyer agent sends a commercial action. The message alone is not enough. The counterparty needs to know who authorized it, what it may bind, and which terms it contains.
02 / Verify
Authority travels with the action.
A202 verifies the chain from the organization to the agent, including scope, financial limits, validity, and revocation. Missing authority stops the action before shared state changes.
03 / Version
Every change creates a new object.
The current offer is explicit. A revision points to the version it replaces, while both remain available for verification. No email thread or application screen decides which terms are current.
04 / Accept
Both sides accept the same terms.
A commitment forms only when the required approvals and signatures point to the same final object. A unilateral claim, a stale signature, or mismatched terms cannot silently become an agreement.
05 / Preserve
The evidence outlives the interface.
The signed sequence can be replayed by either organization or a later reviewer. Verification depends on the record and the specification version, not on hidden service state or access to the original application.
Try the authority gate
A signature proves who signed. A202 proves whether they could.
Switch the mandate status. The signed offer stays identical. Only the authority changes, and that is enough to change the outcome.
Authority chain
Action
offer.submit
Amount
EUR 184,000
Limit
EUR 250,000
accepted
The action enters shared state.
The mandate is active, the proposed action is in scope, and EUR 184,000 is below the EUR 250,000 limit.
HTTP 202 / ACCEPTED SUBMISSION
Rules every compatible implementation must preserve.
These principles define how a governed commercial exchange should behave across different implementations. They keep authority, disclosure, state, and verification consistent even when the organizations use different technology.
Fail closed
If authority is missing, expired, revoked, or ambiguous, the proposed action is rejected before it changes the shared commercial state. The system does not treat incomplete evidence as permission.
Explicit typed state
Offers, approvals, awards, revocations, and commitments are represented as signed, versioned objects. The current commercial state is derived from those objects rather than inferred from messages or application screens.
Assurance is reported, never inferred
An assessment result states what was tested, against which version, and with what outcome. If a control was not assessed, the record says unassessed rather than allowing a reader to interpret silence as a pass.
Disclosure minimalism
A participant receives only the fields and events explicitly allowed for its role and the current commercial state. This avoids relying on a denylist that can block only the disclosures someone anticipated in advance.
Deterministic verification
The verification rules operate on the signed record, not on hidden service state. Two reviewers using the same specification version and the same record should reach the same result.
Carrier neutrality
The commercial meaning of an A202 object does not depend on the messaging network, agent framework, cloud provider, or payment rail used to carry out the work.
What A202 refuses to do.
A202 is limited to the shared commercial record between independent organizations. It deliberately leaves discovery, strategy, settlement, reputation, and custody to the systems already responsible for them.
No marketplace or matching.
A202 does not discover suppliers, rank counterparties, or decide who should trade. Another system can perform discovery. A202 begins when an identified party is invited into a named event.
No settlement execution.
A202 records the commercial obligation and the evidence supporting it. A bank, payment provider, or other settlement rail remains responsible for moving value and reporting whether settlement completed.
No reputation scores.
The specification does not convert commercial history into a counterparty score, rating, or recommendation. Each organization remains responsible for its own supplier qualification and risk decisions.
No token.
A202 does not define a token, settlement asset, wallet, or custody model. Commercial amounts can refer to existing currencies, while value moves through the payment rails selected by the organizations.
No commercial strategy.
An agent, buyer, supplier, or separate optimization system decides how to pursue terms. A202 defines the authority, state, disclosure, and commitment rules that determine what the resulting offers can bind.
Open specification
One specification. No required platform.
A202 specifies meaning, not transport. Its objects can move over A2A, plain HTTPS, or another carrier without changing what authority, acceptance, or evidence means.
Plural Worlds initiated and sponsors A202 and holds the mark. A. A. Musse created and maintains the specification. Its governance is designed to support independent stewardship as participation grows.