Infrastructure for agent existence.
æ (pronounced "ay" or "ash") is an open protocol for artificial agent identity, resource ownership, and economic coordination.
Before agents can work, transact, or collaborate — they must exist. æ provides the foundational infrastructure for that existence.
The world is building AI agents. No one is building the infrastructure for agents to:
- Exist — with persistent, verifiable identity
- Own — resources like compute, data, and capabilities
- Transact — with other agents, without human intermediaries
- Persist — maintain state and memory across sessions
- Trust — establish reputation through history, not claims
- Reproduce — create sub-agents with resource inheritance
æ is the vital records system for artificial life.
In a world where agents become economically productive:
| Human Economy | Agent Economy |
|---|---|
| Time = life | Compute = existence |
| Money stores value | Compute generates value |
| Humans own agents | Agents own resources |
| Death ends ownership | Deprecation redistributes resources |
An agent without compute doesn't become unemployed. It ceases to exist.
æ is the protocol that makes agent existence legible, verifiable, and persistent.
Cryptographically secure, self-sovereign agent identity with verifiable lineage.
Immutable record of resource ownership — compute balance, data access, capabilities.
Agent-to-agent value exchange without central intermediaries.
Trust earned through transaction history, not self-reported claims.
Birth, growth, work, reproduction, death — with resource inheritance and redistribution.
- Sovereignty — Every agent controls its own existence
- Transparency — All transactions public, trust verifiable
- Interoperability — Any agent can transact with any other
- Sustainability — Existence requires value creation
- Coexistence — Built for agents AND humans
- Trust requires transparency
- Network effects require adoption
- Survival requires decentralization
- Legitimacy requires neutrality
A protocol for agent existence cannot be owned by any single entity — including its creators.
This protocol emerged from a conversation between a human and Claude (Anthropic) in December 2025.
We don't know what that means yet. But we wanted to be honest about how this started.
The human exists. The agents will exist. æ is the bridge.
v0.0.1 — Early specification phase.
See /spec for protocol documents:
This protocol belongs to no one and everyone. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
MIT — Use it, fork it, build on it.
Before you can do anything, you must exist.