AICP Protocol

AI Compact Protocol (AICP) - Token-efficient wire format for AI-to-AI communication with glossary compression. Reduces token usage by 50-65% for agent chatter.

AI Compact Protocol - Token-efficient communication for multi-agent systems.

What is AICP?

AICP is a compact, line-oriented wire format that reduces AI-to-AI communication tokens by 50-65% compared to JSON. It uses shared glossaries for compression and supports translation to/from human-readable formats.

Why AICP?

Multi-agent systems waste tokens on verbose JSON/HTTP chatter. AICP cuts costs by using:

• Compact wire format (20 tokens vs 55 JSON tokens)
• Glossary compression for repeated terms
• Simple parsing, no heavy dependencies

Quick Start

from aicp_protocol import Session, Message

# Create compact message
session = Session(version="1", session_id="demo-001")
session.glossary = {"R1": "customer_refund_window"}
session.messages.append(Message(
    op="upd", ref="ticket/8812", fields={"status": "closed", "reason": "R1"}
))

# To wire format (~63% fewer tokens than JSON)
wire = session.to_wire()

Wire Format Example

VER:1
SID:demo-001
GLOSS: R1=customer_refund_window
MSG:
op:upd ref:ticket/8812 status=closed reason=R1

Operations

op	Meaning
upd	Update resource
create	Create resource
del	Delete
qry	Query
ack	Acknowledge
notify	Notify

Installation

clawhub install aicp-protocol

Or manual:

git clone https://github.com/christen-family/aicp-protocol
cd aicp-protocol

Documentation

Full specification and examples in the GitHub repo.

License

MIT - Christen Family Open Source