Core documentation

21. Separate ASP semantics, wire bindings, and deployment surfaces

Specification metadata

adr: 21
title: Separate ASP semantics, wire bindings, and deployment surfaces
status: accepted
date: 2026-06-22

§Context

The v0.1 draft mixed three concerns: domain semantics, JSON-RPC wire shape, and ecosystem deployment surfaces such as repository policy, local overrides, manifests, registry, and certification. External review correctly identified that only the semantic contract is justified today.

§Decision

ASP v0.1 private work separates:

Semantic contract: snapshots, changesets, assessments, edit plans, host decisions, coverage, assurance modes, and policy authority.
Wire bindings: native JSON-RPC stdio and a namespaced MCP extension are private candidates until a bake-off proves which should become normative.
Deployment surfaces: .asp/asp.json, .asp/local.json, asp-server.json, registries, and certification remain experimental until conformance and dogfood evidence justify standardization.

§Consequences

Current JSON-RPC schemas are a private binding candidate, not an irrevocable public base protocol.
MCP can be tested as a substrate without reducing ASP to ordinary model-controlled tools.
Deployment files may exist as examples, but they must not be represented as stable public API.