Core documentation

Overview

Specification metadata

title: Overview
status: established
normative: false
summary: First-reader primer for ASP boundaries, host/provider responsibilities, capability families, decisions, receipts, and deeper protocol objects.
updated: 2026-06-23

ASP is the code-change assurance boundary for agentic development.

Protocol	Boundary	What it coordinates
LSP	language tools <-> IDE	editor language features
ACP	IDE/editor <-> agent	editor-agent collaboration
ASP	agent/harness/host <-> robustness engines	assurance over proposed code changes

An ASP host asks providers/servers to inspect, check, or propose edit plans, then the host returns a decision and a receipt. Providers/servers produce assessments or edit plans. Hosts produce decisions.

§Minimal Flow

A harness asks the host for status.
The host reports ready/degraded/unavailable status and which check providers are required.
The harness sends a candidate change to the host for a gate call-site.
The host calls the required check provider.
The provider returns an assessment with diagnostics, evidence, coverage, freshness data, provider metadata, timing, and cache metadata.
The host combines policy, required coverage, provider authority, and assessment results.
The host returns allow, deny, or indeterminate plus a receipt.

The receipt is host-authored. It records what ran, which provider evidence contributed, which policy digest was used, what coverage was achieved or degraded, and what assurance the host actually achieved.

§Capability Families

Capability	Provider/server output	Host responsibility
inspect	read-only code intelligence, such as references, impact, and flows	route the query, bind freshness, and compose results
check	an assessment of a candidate change	compute the decision for the call-site
edit	an edit plan or workspace-edit proposal	decide whether and how the proposal may be applied

Older documents may use sense, judge, and act as shorthand. Normative conformance attaches to inspect, check, and edit.

§Host/Provider Split

ASP uses a star topology:

harness or agent -> host -> provider/server

The harness talks to the host. The host talks to providers/servers. Providers/servers do not compose directly with one another and do not decide whether a gate passes.

The host owns capability negotiation, policy, freshness, provider aggregation, decision production, receipt production, authority status, and mediated apply. A provider/server owns the capability work it advertises: inspect facts, check assessments, or edit plans.

§Core First

The ASP v1.0 Core Profile defines the smallest adoption path:

host status
host capabilities
provider initialize/initialized
host blob/tree callbacks
provider check/evaluate
host host/evaluateChangeset
host-authored allow/deny/negative decision receipts

Inspect, edit, apply, deployment surfaces, and implementation-parity work remain optional non-Core profiles unless a later ADR promotes them.

§Deeper Protocol Objects

The primer intentionally leaves dense machinery to later chapters:

Data model: SnapshotRef/Baseline, ChangeSet, Assessment, EditPlan, Diagnostic, and FailClass.
Host obligations: policy, aggregation, freshness, coverage, authority, assurance, budgets, and mediated apply.
Outer seam: harness-to-host status, evaluation, inspect, edit, apply, and receipt payloads.
Core Profile: the private host/provider/check adoption gate and evidence bundle.

§Document Status

Area	Status
Overview, architecture, transport+lifecycle, data model	established
Inspect/check/edit capability families	established
Historical sense/judge/act compatibility chapters	draft, non-normative
Host obligations, conformance	established
Outer seam, installation and discovery	draft
Core Profile	established

ASP v1.0 centers on host-produced decisions over provider-produced assessments. Binding and deployment surfaces remain private draft work.