CONSENSUS & EVOLUTION

MSR Request for Comments (RFC)

The formal engineering process by which protocol specifications, schema revisions, and architectural extensions are proposed, peer-reviewed, and standardized.

RFC Lifecycle

Inspired by the IETF and W3C standard tracks, every normative protocol change progresses through five distinct governance stages:

Stage 1
Draft

Author opens PR with problem statement and initial JSON Schema

Stage 2
Working Group

Technical review, prototype validation, security impact analysis

Stage 3
Call for Consensus

30-day public deliberation period for ecosystem stakeholders

Stage 4
Accepted Standard

Integrated into canonical schema and released in SemVer

Accepted RFCs (Normative Standards)

RFC Title Author / Working Group Accepted Date Status
RFC 0001 MSR JSON Protocol Core Specification & Wire Format Antonio Santos & Protocol Stewards 2026-09-17 Standard
RFC 0002 Standardized Capability Descriptors for MCP Servers and AI Agents AI Tooling Working Group 2026-09-15 Standard
RFC 0003 Cryptographic Signatures and Root-Domain Trust Verification Security & Cryptography Working Group 2026-08-30 Standard

Draft RFCs (Under Working Group Deliberation)

RFC Title Lead Author Working Group Status
RFC 0004 Autonomous AI Agent Execution Sandboxes and Egress Envelopes Synapse Research Labs Agentic Runtimes WG Working Draft
RFC 0005 Decentralized Registry Gossip Federation Protocol over Webhooks Registry Interop Committee Sync & Federation WG Call for Consensus
RFC 0006 Geographic and Language Availability Protocol Stewards Core Protocol Working Draft

Archived & Rejected Proposals

RFC Title Outcome Rationale
RFC 0000-A Direct Embedding of Full OpenAPI YAML inside Manifest Rejected Rejected due to payload bloat. Mandated URI linkage (interfaces.openapi.spec_url) instead of duplicate embedded trees.
RFC 0000-B Floating-Point Pricing with Local Currency Symbol Parsing Rejected Violated deterministic parser rule. Mandated integer minor currency units (cents) and ISO 4217 three-letter codes.
RFC 0000-C XML Schema Translation Layer for ASP PAD 4.0 Archived Archived after v1.1.0 in favor of native JSON Schema (Draft 2020-12) tooling.

How to Participate in the RFC Process

1. Submit a Proposal

Fork the msrjson/specification repository on GitHub and work inside its rfc/ directory. Copy the RFC template, assign the next sequential draft number, and write your technical specification, schema diff, and security considerations.

2. Prototype & Test

Conformant RFCs require at least one working implementation or reference manifest validating in the official validator or CLI. Unimplemented theoretical proposals are deferred until working code is provided.

3. Public Consensus

When the Working Group reaches consensus, the proposal enters a 30-day Call for Consensus advertised on the mailing list and community channels. Feedback is addressed publicly before final ratification.

4. Schema Integration

Accepted RFCs are assigned a permanent RFC number, added to the normative specification, and merged into the canonical JSON Schema under Semantic Versioning guidelines.