Comparison
How PEAC Protocol relates to other standards for AI content access, attribution, and provenance.
Key Insight
PEAC is complementary to existing standards, not a replacement. Use robots.txt for crawl control, RSL for AI usage tokens, C2PA for provenance - and PEAC for verifiable proof that policies were honored across systems and organizational boundaries.
| Feature | PEAC | robots.txt | RSL 1.0 | C2PA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Verifiable receipts for policy, payment, attribution | Crawl instructions for search engines | AI usage tokens and permissions | Content provenance and authenticity |
| Cryptographic Verification | Yes (Ed25519 JWS) | No | No | Yes (X.509 certificates) |
| Payment Integration | Yes (HTTP 402, x402, Stripe) | No | No | No |
| Machine-Readable Policy | Yes (/.well-known/peac.txt) | Limited (allow/disallow) | Yes (robots.txt extended syntax) | Embedded in content |
| Audit Trail | Yes (receipt chains, telemetry) | No | No | Yes (manifest history) |
| Agent Support | Yes (MCP, ACP, TAP) | Limited (User-Agent matching) | Yes (AI bot targeting) | No (human-focused) |
| Real-time Enforcement | Yes (HTTP 402 flow) | No (advisory only) | No (advisory only) | No (verification after the fact) |
| Offline Verification | Yes | N/A | N/A | Yes |
| Attribution Tracking | Yes (in receipt claims) | No | Limited | Yes (creator metadata) |
| Standardization | Open specification (v0.9.x) | De facto standard (RFC 9309) | RSL 1.0 (emerging) | Industry coalition |
Agent Protocol Integration
PEAC provides mappings for major agent and commerce protocols:
Model Context Protocol
Tool call receipts in metadata
Agentic Commerce Protocol
Agent-to-agent transaction support
Universal Commerce Protocol
Google commerce webhook verification
Trusted Agent Protocol
Visa RFC 9421 signature verification
Robots Specification Language
Extended ControlPurpose tokens
When to Use What
Use robots.txt for
- -Basic crawl control for search engines
- -Path-based allow/disallow rules
- -Crawl-delay directives
Use RSL for
- -AI training opt-in/opt-out signals
- -AI usage tokens (ai-all, ai-train, ai-input)
- -Extended robots.txt semantics
Use C2PA for
- -Image/video authenticity verification
- -Creator attribution in media files
- -Edit history and provenance chains
Use PEAC for
- +Verifiable evidence that terms were followed
- +Payment flows with verifiable receipts
- +Agent-to-agent commerce and coordination
- +Audit trails for regulatory review
Using Them Together
# robots.txt - crawl control User-agent: * Allow: / # RSL tokens - AI usage permissions User-agent: ai-all Disallow: /private/ # PEAC policy - verifiable terms # /.well-known/peac.txt version: 0.10.0 usage: conditional purposes: [train, search, inference, index] attribution: required receipts: required # Result: Crawlers obey robots.txt, respect RSL tokens, # and PEAC provides verifiable evidence of what terms applied
Payment Rail Comparison
PEAC works with multiple payment rails, each suited for different use cases:
| Rail | Best For | Settlement | Package |
|---|---|---|---|
| x402 | Micropayments, agent-to-agent | Instant (stablecoin) | @peac/rails-x402 |
| Stripe | SaaS, subscriptions, cards globally | T+2 days | @peac/rails-stripe |
| Card | Generic card billing, any processor | T+2 days | @peac/rails-card |
Get Started with PEAC
Add verifiable records to your existing policy stack.