N-AALP™: Native Agentic Application Layer Protocol
The deterministic, post-quantum signed application layer protocol for autonomous AI agents, swarm orchestration, and provable tool execution.
| DRAFT_ID: | draft-bubblefish-naalp-01 |
| SERIALIZATION: | CBOR (RFC 8949) |
| SIGNATURES: | COSE Sign1 (RFC 9052) |
| POST-QUANTUM: | ML-DSA-65 (Dilithium3, FIPS 204) |
| DAG VERIFICATION: | Hash-linked causal ordering |
Protocol Primitives For Autonomous AI
Deterministic State CBOR
Strict canonical key sorting and deterministic float encoding are specified so that, where both endpoints implement the canonical CBOR profile correctly, identical multi-agent interactions produce bit-for-bit identical hashes across heterogeneous runtimes.
COSE Sign1 Non-Repudiation
Every tool invocation, memory mutation, and agent handoff is cryptographically sealed by the executing agent’s Ed25519 or post-quantum keypair, preventing impersonation.
Causal DAG Receipts
Parent-hash linking constructs a tamper-evident causal graph of agent decision chains, providing deterministic provenance from human user intent down to individual tool writes.
Canonical CDDL Schema
; The normative CDDL for N-AALP is published in the Internet-Draft itself.
; It is reproduced there in full, in Appendix A, and that text is authoritative.
; Reproducing a schema here risks it drifting out of step with the draft,
; so this page links to the source instead of copying it.
Read the normative schema:
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-bubblefish-naalp/
; What the envelope provides, in outcome terms:
; - a signed object whose identity is a hash of its own content
; - explicit causal ordering, so replay and reordering are detectable
; - a single canonical encoding, so two conformant implementations agree byte for byte
; - post-quantum signatures under COSEProtocol Feature Matrix
| Feature Capability | JSON-RPC / REST Wrappers | Raw gRPC / Protobuf | BubbleFish N-AALP™ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deterministic Serialization | ✕ None (key order undefined) | ✕ Non-canonical binary packing | ✓ Strict Canonical CBOR |
| Cryptographic Attestation | ✕ External JWT / SaaS bearer | ✕ Transport TLS only | ✓ Native COSE Sign1 (Per-Message) |
| Post-Quantum Resistance | ✕ Classical RSA/ECC | ✕ Classical NIST curves | ✓ ML-DSA-65 / ML-KEM-1024 Ready |
| Forward-Secure Deletion | ✕ Impossible (SaaS retains) | ✕ No state proofs | ✓ Verifiable Erasure Proofs |
| Air-Gapped Sovereign Ops | ✕ Requires cloud endpoint | △ Partial local setup | ✓ 100% Zero-Cloud Standalone |
