Governance
How PEAC is stewarded, how decisions are made, and what the protocol does and does not standardize.
Current Stewardship
PEAC is an Apache-2.0 protocol project stewarded by Originary and community contributors during the pre-1.0 phase.
Scope Discipline
What PEAC standardizes
- -The policy discovery surface at
/.well-known/peac.txt - -Signed interaction records
- -Deterministic verification behavior
- -Portable audit bundles and related verification artifacts
What PEAC does not standardize
- -Identity registries
- -Payment rails or custody
- -Observability systems
- -Agent orchestration protocols
- -Policy decision engines
- -Runtime control planes
Neutrality and Non-capture Commitments
- No exclusive control as a condition of funding or adoption
- The protocol is not defined by one implementation
- Conformance artifacts matter more than steward claims
- Originary may build products around PEAC, but PEAC does not require Originary
Decision Process
Proposed changes begin in GitHub Issues or Discussions. Normative changes are reflected in specifications, reference implementations, conformance artifacts, and release notes. The practical test is cross-implementation reproducibility, not maintainer preference.
Verification-first Posture
- -Another party should be able to reach the same result independently
- -Portable artifacts matter more than issuer dashboards
- -Deterministic verification is preferred over interpretive verification
- -Public keys, signed records, and bundles are first-class protocol surfaces
Privacy and Minimization Stance
PEAC prefers hashes, references, and minimized payloads where possible. The protocol does not require identity collection and should preserve audit utility without turning records into unnecessary data exhaust.
Security Posture
- -Fail-closed by default: ambiguity is treated as risk
- -Inputs are parsed strictly
- -Replay and time-window protection are built into verification behavior
- -Public verification should not depend on issuer cooperation after issuance
Standards Posture
PEAC complements existing systems and standards rather than replacing them. The project publishes conformance artifacts, tracks cross-language parity, and favors explicit interoperability over implied compatibility.
Contributing
Future Plans
Governance will evolve as adoption matures. Near-term work is focused on public process, clearer contribution pathways, and multi-implementation trust. Formal governance expansion should follow demonstrated external use, not precede it.
License
PEAC Protocol is released under the Apache-2.0 license.