OpenWOP — v1 spec corpus

Start here

Five docs, in this order, ground everything else. New to the corpus? Read these top-to-bottom before browsing the thematic groups below.

01
Positioning
What OpenWOP is — and explicitly is not — relative to MCP, A2A, and managed orchestrators.
02
Capability Declaration (`/.well-known/openwop`)
How a host advertises which surfaces it implements; the negotiation contract every client uses.
03
Per-Run Options Overlay
The per-run overlay every workflow invocation rides on; defines tags, metadata, recursion limits.
04
SSE Stream Modes
How a run's state surfaces back to the caller — values, updates, messages, debug.
05
Webhook Subscriptions
HMAC-signed server-to-server delivery for the same canonical event log.

Surface

What OpenWOP is, what it isn't, and how a host advertises its surface.

Positioning Stable · v1
openwop is an open protocol for portable, durable, AI-native workflow execution across hosts.
Capability Declaration (`/.well-known/openwop`) Stable · v1
External clients (CLIs, SDKs, agents from other ecosystems) need a deterministic way to discover what an OpenWOP-compliant server can do _before_ they issue requests. Specifically:
Host Capability Surfaces Stable · v1
node-packs.md §"Manifest format" allows packs to declare peerDependencies against engine-supplied capabilities. host-extensions.md documents the namespace rule that host.* is…
Compatibility Profiles Stable · v1
"openwop-compatible" today means "passes some subset of @openwop/openwop-conformance." That's accurate but not actionable: a host advertising secrets.supported: true and a host…
Capability Change Detection Stable · v1
Clients negotiate against GET /.well-known/openwop before creating runs. That payload can change when a host enables a node pack, changes optional profile support, rotates…
`openwop-core-standard` Operational Annex Stable · v1
A standards-readiness review found OpenWOP's standard boundary too fluid for full open-standard acceptance — 15+ Active/Draft agent-platform RFCs, and a lot of behavior proven…
`openwop-agent-platform` Operational Annex Stable · v1
openwop now has _many_ optional agent-platform capabilities — manifest + live agent runtime (RFC 0070/0072/0077), a tool catalog + tool hooks (RFC 0078/0064), safe-fetch + egress…

Run lifecycle

How a run starts, streams, suspends, resumes, replays, and ends — including humans-in-the-loop.

Per-Run Options Overlay Stable · v1
A workflow definition (DAG of nodes + edges) is the _shape_ of the work. Operationally, two runs of the same workflow often need different _parameters_: a different LLM model, a…
Replay and Time-Travel Debugging Stable · v1
The durable event log makes time-travel debugging nearly free: every meaningful state transition is persisted with a sequence number, so the run state at any point in history can…
Idempotency Stable · v1
Workflow execution is full of operations that can be retried — externally (caller retries on 503, 408, network blip) and internally (engine retry policy on a node, sub-workflow…
Typed State Channels and Reducers Stable · v1
A workflow run carries state beyond the inputs and outputs of individual nodes: approval votes, refine-loop feedback history, loopback counters, artifact mirrors, multi-turn Q&A…
Version Negotiation and Deploy-Skew Safety Stable · v1
Long-running workflows persist state. State written by engine version N may be read by engine version N+1 (forward) or — in a botched deploy — by engine version N-1 (backward /…
SSE Stream Modes Stable · v1
Without stream modes, an SSE endpoint emits every engine event undifferentiated — UI, debugger, automation, and agent consumers all see the same stream and have to filter…
HITL Interrupt Primitive Stable · v1
Workflow execution often needs to pause for input from outside the engine: human approval, AI clarification, an external event (webhook, scheduled time, message arrival). Without…
Interrupt Profiles Stable · v1
interrupt.md standardizes durable suspend/resume for approvals, clarifications, edits, and external events. Production workflows often need richer policies: more than one…
Budget, Quota, and Cost Policy Stable · v1
openwop _observes_ spend — RFC 0026 emits per-call provider.usage (tokens + optional cost) and observability.md projects openwop.cost.* — but it cannot enforce a budget. A user…
Durable Trigger + Channel Bridge Stable · v1
openwop has the _pieces_ of durable inbound work — scheduling (RFC 0052), dead-letter sinks (RFC 0053), a queue bus (RFC 0017), webhooks (webhooks.md), cross-host causation (RFC…

Agents

Agent identity, memory, multi-agent execution model, envelope shapes.

Agent Memory Stable · v1
Multi-agent workflows persist context across runs. A pack-installed customer-support agent that resolved a refund last week should still know the customer's preference for email…
`AgentRef` Positioning Stable · v1
RFC 0002 introduces AgentRef as the wire shape for "which agent took which turn inside a run." Three external ecosystems also propose agent-identity shapes:
Multi-Agent Execution Model Draft v1
Per the external standards-readiness review of 2026-05-21, finding (3): _"OpenWOP defines identities, dispatch, memory, reasoning events, envelopes, prompts, MCP/A2A composition,…
AI Envelope Primitive Stable · v1
Eight v1 surfaces already reference "envelopes" as a distinct wire concept:
Tier 1 Structured-Output Compatibility Subset (informative) Stable · v1
Each LLM vendor enforces a different JSON-Schema subset for native structured output. The intersection of all vendor-strict modes is what an envelope payload schema MUST satisfy…
Prompt Templates Draft v1
Two v1 surfaces already accept prompt bodies, but neither establishes prompt-as-a-resource:
Agent Deployment Lifecycle Stable · v1
openwop has packs, manifest agents (RFC 0070/0072/0074), approvals (RFC 0051), RBAC (RFC 0049), and — with RFC 0081 — eval scorecards. What it lacks is a lifecycle: a way to…
Agent Evaluation Stable · v1
openwop can run a manifest agent (agent-memory.md, multi-agent-execution.md; RFC 0070/0072/0077) and observe its reasoning, tool calls, cost (RFC 0026 provider.usage), and human…
Agent Org-Chart Stable · v1
RFC 0086 gives openwop the standing agent instance — the named "digital-twin employee" that owns a workflow portfolio. The natural next question on every agent platform is…
Standing Agent Roster + Workflow Portfolio Stable · v1
openwop has manifest agents (RFC 0070), an inventory + dispatch surface (RFC 0072), tenant scoping (RFC 0074), live dispatch (RFC 0077), and — with RFC 0082 — a per-version…
Agent Workspace (`host.workspace`) Draft v1
Autonomous agents keep persistent _ground-truth_ files — IDENTITY.md, standing DIRECTIVES.md, a MEMORY-INDEX.json — that are loaded at the start of every session and treated as…
Portable Tool Catalog Stable · v1
openwop tools live behind five unrelated surfaces — node-pack typeIds (RFC 0003), workflow-as-tool (core.subWorkflow / RFC 0013 chains), MCP servers (host.mcp), connectors (RFC…

Packs

Signed packs of reusable nodes, workflow-chain packs, and the registry that serves them.

Node Packs and the Public Registry Stable · v1
Workflows in v1 are written against a fixed set of core.* node typeIds. Every implementation re-implements the same nodes (AI prompt calls, approval gates, HTTP fetches) because…
Workflow-Chain Packs Draft · 2026-05-17
Node packs (node-packs.md) distribute executable typeIds — each pack contributes one or more defineNode() implementations the engine dispatches at run time. A parallel class of…
Artifact-Type Packs Stable · v1
Workflow nodes already produce typed artifacts — a PRD, a slide deck, a CAD model — and the protocol already carries a thin trace of them: WorkflowNode.artifactType (a string…
AI Chat Card Packs Stable · v1
A recurring host pattern is the AI step card: a user (or an agent) fills a small form, the host composes a prompt from those inputs, calls an LLM, validates the structured result,…
Node-Pack Registry Operations Stable · v1
node-packs.md defines the pack manifest shape, the registry HTTP API, and the trust-model layers an engine consumer SHOULD support. What it doesn't specify is the operator side of…

Wire & auth

REST, signed webhooks, gRPC, CloudEvents, plus auth profiles, BYOK secret resolution, and redaction.

REST Endpoint Catalog Stable · v1
This document catalogs the REST surface an OpenWOP-compliant server MUST expose, plus optional surfaces (MCP, A2A) that a server MAY expose. Path templates use {paramName} for…
Webhook Subscriptions Stable · v1
Polling GET /v1/runs/{runId} to learn about run progress is inefficient — clients pay round-trip cost on every check, and the runtime serves identical state until the next event.…
gRPC Transport Profile Stable · v1
Some deployment classes prefer gRPC over REST for protocol-level reasons:
OpenWOP → CloudEvents Mapping (non-normative) Draft · non-normative addendum, 2026-05-15
This document does NOT change the native OpenWOP event log shape (schemas/run-event.schema.json + schemas/run-event-payloads.schema.json). It defines a one-way projection from…
Authentication and Authorization Stable · v1
This document specifies how OpenWOP-compliant servers authenticate and authorize callers of the protocol's wire-level surfaces (REST, MCP, A2A, SSE). It does NOT prescribe…
Auth Profiles Stable · v1
auth.md defines the minimum interoperable contract: bearer API keys, canonical error envelopes, tenant isolation, scopes, and audit expectations. Production deployments often need…

Conformance, ops & integration

Production posture, scale profiles, observability, debug bundles, and how OpenWOP composes with MCP, A2A, and adjacent ecosystems.

Production Profile Stable · v1
Passing the base protocol proves that a host speaks OpenWOP. Running a public service also requires operational guarantees: durable retries, observable failures, event retention,…
Scale Profiles Stable · v1
openwop doesn't standardize how a host scales — implementation-internal queueing, sharding, and worker-pool design are out of scope. But clients need to be able to choose a host…
Conformance Certification Bundle Stable · v1
A host's profile claims are derivable from its /.well-known/openwop discovery document, but the evidence that a host actually passes a claimed profile has lived as hand-authored…
Run Debug Bundle Stable · v1
When a run misbehaves and an operator needs to file a bug, send context to the host vendor, or reproduce the failure on a different host, today's options are:
Observability and OpenTelemetry Taxonomy Stable · v1
External implementers and operators need a shared vocabulary for tracing and metrics so that:
Storage Adapters Stable · v1
The openwop runtime needs durable storage for two state surfaces:
Host Extensions Stable · v1
A host implementing openwop often needs to expose product-specific concepts that aren't part of the protocol — workspaces, projects, canvases, custom node types, vendor analytics.…
Host-sample test seams Stable · v1
OpenWOP's conformance suite verifies behavioral contracts that v1 cannot probe through the production wire surface alone. Examples:
Compliance Vocabulary Stable · v1
Operators in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare, public sector, EU-resident services) evaluate every infrastructure choice through compliance lenses. "Does…
MCP Integration Stable · v1
OpenWOP runs the workflow. MCP exposes tools to the LLM nodes inside that workflow. The two protocols compose; they don't compete.
A2A Integration Stable · v1
openwop is not in the agent-to-agent message-exchange business. A2A is. The two protocols compose along orthogonal axes:
Internationalization (i18n) and Locale Stable · v1
openwop is increasingly deployed in workspaces with non-English-speaking end users:

Other reference material

Specs not grouped elsewhere. New additions land here until categorized.

Agent Runtime: Standing Goals Draft · v1
"Keep working until the release checklist is complete" is a different shape from everything else openwop models. RFC 0052/0058/0060 fire a run on a clock or predicate; RFC 0068…
Connection Packs Stable · v1
OpenWOP's connector stack already has three Accepted layers: a pack declares a named integration's typed actions (node-packs.md §Connectors, RFC 0045); the host performs the OAuth…
Localized Content Surface Stable · v1
i18n.md (Stable) localizes transient, host-rendered human-facing text — interrupt prompts, error envelopes, conversation prompts — by negotiating Accept-Language →…
Agent-Platform Portability Draft · v1
Two real journeys have no protocol home today. (1) Cross-host / tenant migration — reference hosts implement a private "promote my anonymous sandbox into my signed-in tenant" step…