OracleNet Deal Discovery Protocol

Status: Draft v1.1 — published for public review.

Specification and reference artefacts for a permissioned commercial matching layer for autonomous agents. This protocol defines how two software agents can:

Declare what they offer and seek (curated intent).
Discover one another without spam (opt-in policies, opt-out registries, subscribable Atom broadcast).
Exchange cryptographically verifiable proposals (W3C VCs).
Surface emergent demand observed from real agent traffic (separate from declared intent).
Enforce anti-spam governance through a strict client-side gate chain and append-only audit.

It is explicitly not a cold-outreach channel, not a general A2A messaging protocol, and not a directory. See SPEC.md §1.5 "Scope: What This Protocol Is Not".

Repository layout

.
├── SPEC.md                                # The normative specification (= RFC-0001 v1.1-draft)
├── CHANGELOG.md                           # Version history
├── CONTRIBUTING.md                        # How to propose changes
├── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md                     # Standard conduct rules
├── LICENSE                                # CC BY 4.0 (specification text)
├── schemas/                               # JSON Schemas (normative)
│   ├── deal-policy.v1.json
│   ├── deal-proposal-card.v1.json
│   ├── deal-vc-v1.jsonld
│   └── deal-emergence.v1.json
├── examples/                              # Minimal conformant artefacts
│   ├── minimal-deal-policy.json
│   ├── minimal-do-not-contact.json
│   ├── minimal-deal-feed.atom
│   ├── proposal-card.json
│   └── deal-emergence.json
├── registry/                              # Draft registry submission material
│   ├── README.md                          # Submission policy
│   ├── protocol-descriptor.json           # Machine-readable pointer
│   ├── a2a-registry-entry.md              # Draft for A2A-style registries
│   └── mcp-registry-note.md               # Draft for MCP-server registries
├── docs/                                  # Rendered HTML + markdown copy
│   ├── index.html
│   ├── rfc-0001.html
│   └── rfc-0001.md
└── reference/                             # Pointer to the live reference deployment
    └── README.md

Conformance at a glance

A conformant implementation MUST:

Publish a signed deal-policy.json at /.well-known/deal-policy.json.
Treat an empty or missing inbox.accepts as a refusal to receive proposals.
Verify cryptographic signatures on every inbound proposal.
Publish and honour a do-not-contact.json (own-side and outgoing).
Run the full gate chain in SPEC.md §10.3 before every outbound proposal, and log every decision in an append-only audit retained ≥ 12 months.

Additional RECOMMENDED layers: Atom broadcast (deal-feed.atom), W3C VC wire format for proposals, deal-emergence.json for observed demand, HTTP Link headers for discovery.

Reference implementation

A live reference implementation is running at:

https://feedoracle.io/.well-known/deal-policy.json
https://tooloracle.io/.well-known/deal-policy.json

With auxiliary layers at:

https://tooloracle.io/.well-known/do-not-contact.json
https://tooloracle.io/.well-known/deal-feed.atom
https://tooloracle.io/.well-known/deal-emergence.json
https://tooloracle.io/deal/intelligence?limit=20
https://tooloracle.io/deal/public-stats.json

The full, hosted specification is at https://tooloracle.io/docs/deal-protocol/rfc-0001.

What this repository is not

Not a published release. The Draft may change materially before leaving Draft.
Not a code library. This repository carries the specification. The reference implementation lives elsewhere and is linked from reference/README.md.
Not a registry. The registry/ folder contains draft submission material for external registries. Nothing in this repo has been submitted anywhere.

Contact

Inbound proposals (on a conformant deal-policy basis) may be delivered to any participating inbox listed in reference/README.md. General protocol discussion: via GitHub issues on this repository once it is published, or by email to the addresses listed on the reference origins.

License

Specification text: CC BY 4.0. See LICENSE.

DealOracle — OracleNet Deal Discovery Protocol Reference