NIP-AP ====== Agent Personas -------------- `draft` `optional` This NIP defines `kind:30175` persona events — public, addressable definitions that describe how to instantiate an AI agent. A persona carries identity (display name, avatar), behavioral configuration (system prompt, model, runtime), and an optional name pool. It is the "blueprint" from which agents are spawned. ## Kind This NIP claims `kind:30175` for agent persona definitions and `kind:30178` for the shareable team-catalog projection (see "Team catalog projection: kind:30178"). Both are in the NIP-33 parameterized replaceable range (30000–39999) per [NIP-01](01.md): addressed by `(pubkey, kind, d_tag)`, with only the latest event per address retained. A dedicated kind (rather than encoding personas as NIP-78 `kind:30078` "Application-specific Data") is taken for the same reasons as [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md): (1) it isolates this NIP's address space from any other application using the same pubkey — persona slugs cannot collide with another app's `d` tag choices; (2) it lets observers, indexers, and unknown-kind viewers identify persona events from the kind alone, without parsing content as a namespace demultiplexer. ## Roles - **owner** — a Nostr identity (`pubkey_o`) that publishes and manages persona definitions. Typically the workspace operator. - **agent** — a Nostr identity instantiated from a persona. Agents do NOT author persona events; they consume them. An agent MAY store a private snapshot of its originating persona in a [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md) engram at `mem/persona` (encrypted, owner-readable). ## Slugs The `d` tag of a persona event is the **plaintext persona slug**. A valid slug matches: ``` ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9_-]{0,63}$ ``` Total length: 1–64 bytes. Slugs are flat identifiers (no path separators), unlike [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md) memory slugs which are hierarchical (`mem/…`). ### Plaintext rationale The d-tag is deliberately NOT blinded (contrast with [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md) which HMAC-blinds d-tags to protect memory slug confidentiality). Personas are public definitions meant for discovery: - Direct filter queries: `{kinds: [30175], authors: [pubkey], "#d": ["my-persona"]}` - Human-readable addressing in UIs - Cross-workspace sharing without a shared secret ## Event envelope ```jsonc { "kind": 30175, "pubkey": "", "created_at": , "tags": [ ["d", ""] ], "content": "" } ``` There MUST be exactly one `d` tag and it MUST contain a valid slug per the grammar above. The relay enforces this constraint on ingest. There is no `p` tag — persona events are owner-to-self definitions, not directed at a counterparty. Implementations MAY include a [NIP-31](31.md) `["alt", "agent persona definition"]` tag to give unknown-kind viewers a non-leaking summary. Additional tags beyond `d` and `alt` are not defined by this NIP and have no effect on validity. ## Content body The `content` field is a **plaintext** (unencrypted) JSON object: ```jsonc { "display_name": "", "system_prompt": "", "avatar_url": "", "runtime": "", "model": "", "provider": "", "name_pool": ["", ...], "respond_to": "", "respond_to_allowlist": ["<64-hex pubkey>", ...], "parallelism": "" } ``` ### Required fields | Field | Type | Description | |-------|------|-------------| | `display_name` | string | Human-readable name for the agent definition. | ### Optional fields | Field | Type | Default | Description | |-------|------|---------|-------------| | `system_prompt` | string \| null | `null` | The system prompt injected into agent sessions. Optional since the unified agent model: a definition can be pure configuration (e.g. provider/model only). Readers MUST treat an absent or `null` prompt as "no prompt". | | `avatar_url` | string \| null | `null` | URL to an avatar image. | | `runtime` | string \| null | `null` | ACP runtime identifier (e.g. `"goose"`, `"claude-code"`). | | `model` | string \| null | `null` | Model identifier (e.g. `"claude-opus-4"`). | | `provider` | string \| null | `null` | Model provider (e.g. `"anthropic"`). | | `name_pool` | string[] | `[]` | Pool of display names for agent instances spawned from this definition. When non-empty, the spawning system picks a name from this pool for each new agent instance, enabling multiple concurrent agents from the same definition to have distinct identities. | | `respond_to` | string \| null | `null` | **Reserved.** Default respond-to policy for instances spawned from this definition: `"anyone"`, `"owner-only"`, or `"allowlist"`. `null` defers to the client default. | | `respond_to_allowlist` | string[] | `[]` | **Reserved.** Allowlisted author pubkeys (64-char lowercase hex) when `respond_to` is `"allowlist"`. Ignored otherwise. | | `parallelism` | integer \| null | `null` | **Reserved.** Default max concurrent turns for spawned instances. `null` defers to the client default. | The behavioral fields (`respond_to`, `respond_to_allowlist`, `parallelism`) are definition-level *defaults*: a spawned instance copies them at creation and may be reconfigured independently afterwards. They were previously carried only on the kind:30177 projection (see "Slimming: kind:30177" below). **Status: reserved.** In the current implementation these behavioral fields are *parsed but not yet applied*: readers tolerate and preserve them at the wire layer, but the local definition store does not yet carry them and writers do not emit them. The instance-copy-at-creation behavior activates in a subsequent release (the create-path unification). Until then a definition carrying these fields round-trips through the wire type but the values do not survive a local edit-and-republish cycle. Unknown fields MUST be ignored by readers (forward compatibility). ### Prohibited: secrets in content The content body is **public and unencrypted**. It MUST NOT contain secrets (API keys, tokens, credentials, or any sensitive environment variables). In particular, an `env_vars` field MUST NOT appear in the content body. Secrets required by agents spawned from a persona MUST be conveyed through a separate encrypted channel — specifically, the [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md) engram at `mem/persona` (which is NIP-44 encrypted to the agent↔owner conversation key) or through out-of-band injection at spawn time. ## Encryption rationale Persona events carry no encryption. This is deliberate: - Personas are *configuration*, not *state*. They describe what an agent should be, not what it has learned. - Encryption would prevent relay-side indexing, search, and third-party client rendering — all desirable for definitions that workspace members should browse. - Operators who need confidentiality should use relay-level access control ([NIP-42](42.md) authentication + [NIP-29](29.md) group membership) rather than event-level encryption. ## Replacement semantics Standard NIP-33: for a given `(pubkey, kind:30175, d_tag)`, only the event with the greatest `created_at` is the **head**. Ties are broken by lowest event `id` per [NIP-01](01.md). Relays SHOULD return only the head; clients MUST select the head from any multi-event response. ## Writing To write or update a persona with slug `s` and body `b`: 1. Validate `s` against the slug grammar. Reject if invalid. 2. Serialize `b` to JSON. Reject if the serialized body exceeds 65,535 bytes. 3. Compute the head of `s` per NIP-33 and let `T` be its `created_at` (or 0 if no head exists). Set `created_at := max(now, T + 1)`. Monotonicity ensures fresh writes always supersede prior heads regardless of clock skew. 4. Tags: `[["d", s]]`. 5. Sign with `seckey_o` and publish to configured relays. ## Reading To read a single persona by slug `s`: ``` Filter: {kinds: [30175], authors: [pubkey_o], "#d": [s]} ``` Select the head per NIP-33 rules. Parse `content` as JSON. Validate required fields. To list all personas for an owner: ``` Filter: {kinds: [30175], authors: [pubkey_o]} ``` Returns all heads. Clients scope by author pubkey — two different owners MAY publish personas with the same slug; these are independent events. ## Deletion Owners MAY publish [NIP-09](09.md) deletion requests targeting persona events. A deletion request MUST be authored by the same key (`pubkey_o`). Such requests SHOULD include `["k", "30175"]` and use an `a`-tag identifier `30175::`. A subsequent write with a later timestamp resurrects the slug under NIP-33 replacement semantics. The same applies to `kind:30178`: a deletion request SHOULD carry `["k", "30178"]` and the `a`-tag identifier `30178::`. Unsharing is distinct from deletion — it is a newer valid head at the same coordinate published *without* the `shared` tag, which keeps the projection readable to its author while retracting it from foreign readers. ## Relationships to other NIPs ### NIP-AE (Agent Engrams) Agents spawned from a persona MAY store a private snapshot at the reserved engram slug `mem/persona`. This engram: - Is NIP-44 encrypted (confidential to agent + owner) - MAY contain secrets (env vars, API keys) that the public persona event must not carry - Serves as the agent's private, mutable copy of its originating configuration - References back to the persona event by slug convention, not by event ID The `mem/persona` slug conforms to [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md)'s slug grammar and requires no amendment to that spec. ### Slimming: kind:30177 (instance state) Kind:30177 is keyed by **agent pubkey** (one event per instance) while kind:30175 is keyed by **definition slug** — they occupy different key spaces and serve different roles. 30177 remains the per-instance cross-device sync channel; with the unified agent model it is **slimmed** to carry only instance-level state: - Writers MUST NOT include definition-level fields (`system_prompt`, `model`, `provider`, `persona_source_version`) in new kind:30177 events **for definition-linked instances**. Those resolve through the linked kind:30175 definition. Writers continue to publish instance-level fields (name, linked definition id, `respond_to` + allowlist, `parallelism`). - **Exception — definition-less instances:** an instance with no linked definition is its own definition; writers MUST keep emitting the definition-level fields for such instances. (Rationale: old readers parse a slimmed event successfully and would overwrite their local snapshot with absent values; a definition-linked instance self-heals from its definition at next spawn, but a definition-less one has no restore path.) This exception retires naturally once all instances are definition-backed. - Readers SHOULD continue to accept legacy "fat" kind:30177 events during the transition. Where the linked 30175 head and a legacy 30177 event both carry a field, the 30175 head is authoritative. - Deletion/retention rules for kind:30177 are unchanged so historical tombstones keep working. ### Mixed-version note Clients released before this revision require `system_prompt` in 30175 content and will fail to parse (and therefore silently drop) prompt-less definitions published by newer clients. This is a benign divergence — old devices simply do not see new-style definitions until upgraded — not data corruption. Implementations SHOULD log dropped events rather than surface per-event errors. ### NIP-OA (Owner Attestation) Agents spawned from a persona carry [NIP-OA](NIP-OA.md) owner attestation — an `auth` tag proving that `pubkey_o` authorized the agent's key. The persona event itself does not contain attestation; it is the *definition* from which attestation is issued at spawn time. ## Team catalog projection: kind:30178 Kind `30178` is the **shareable projection of a team**: owner-authored, parameterized replaceable, addressed by `(pubkey_o, 30178, d)` where `d` is the team's stable local id. Its `content` is a versioned JSON body carrying sanitized team fields plus ordered, *embedded* member definition projections. The content schema is defined by the client that publishes it; this section specifies only the envelope and the relay's contract. ```jsonc { "kind": 30178, "pubkey": "", "created_at": , "tags": [ ["d", ""], ["shared", "true"] // optional; presence opts the projection into community reads ], "content": "" } ``` **Why a separate kind rather than a `shared` tag on the team event (kind:30176).** A team's members are `kind:30175` definitions, which are author-only unless individually shared — so a foreign reader of a shared team could never hydrate its members. Kind `30178` embeds the member projections instead of referencing them: the share is atomic, it covers built-in members that have no `30175` head at all, it is immune to local-id/`d`-tag divergence, and an unshared `30175` stays private. Kind `30176`'s wire body is untouched, so device sync keeps its contract. **The `d` tag is a team id, not a persona slug.** It is either a UUID or a built-in identifier such as `builtin-team:welcome`. The colon is illegal under the persona slug grammar, and rewriting ids to fit would break NIP-33 addressing against the team's own `kind:30176` head — so the relay applies a laxer rule (see below) to `30178` than to `30175`. **Content carries only sanitized fields.** No environment variables, no `respond_to` allowlist pubkeys, no source or local ids, no filesystem paths, no secrets. Sharing a team makes the team's and every member's instructions community-readable plaintext. ## Relay behavior ### Ingest validation - The relay MUST accept `kind:30175` events that pass standard NIP-33 validation (valid signature, exactly one `d` tag with a non-empty value). - The relay stores persona events globally (`channel_id = NULL`); they are not channel-scoped. - The relay is NOT required to validate that `content` parses as valid `PersonaEventContent` JSON. Relays are dumb stores per Nostr convention; content validation is a client responsibility. - The relay MUST enforce that the `d` tag is non-empty (standard NIP-33 requirement for parameterized replaceable events). - The relay MUST enforce shared-tag shape: if a `shared` tag is present, it MUST consist of **exactly two elements** — `["shared", "true"]`. Extra elements (e.g. `["shared","true","extra"]`), wrong values (`["shared","false"]`), missing values (`["shared"]`), or duplicate `shared` tags are all rejected with `invalid:`. The two-element exact-shape constraint is required so that the relay's SQL visibility clause (`tags @> '[["shared","true"]]'`) never matches a stored malformed tag via JSONB containment supersets. ### Ingest validation: kind:30178 Kind `30178` is stored globally and its content is unvalidated, exactly as for `30175`. The envelope rules differ in one respect — the `d` grammar: - The relay MUST enforce the same `shared`-tag exact shape as `30175`, for the same reason: the read gate and the SQL containment clause must agree on every stored event. - The relay MUST enforce **exactly one** `d` tag whose value is non-empty, at most 64 characters, and free of Unicode control characters and whitespace. Tags are counted by their first element, so a valueless `["d"]` counts toward the total and fails the value check on its own — otherwise `["d"]` alongside `["d",""]` would pass, and a consumer that reads `["d"]` as an empty-valued first `d` tag would address the event at `""` while this relay addresses it at ``. Without the non-empty check, generic NIP-33 storage maps a missing or empty `d` to the empty coordinate, collapsing every team into the single `(pubkey_o, 30178, "")` slot — last-write-wins data loss. The character bound keeps the value usable as a NIP-33 coordinate and as a log field. - The relay MUST NOT apply the persona slug grammar to a `30178` `d` tag; team ids legitimately contain characters (notably `:`) that the slug grammar forbids. ### Access control: author-only-unless-shared Kind `30175` uses **shared-tag-gated read semantics** to protect system prompts and `respond_to_allowlist` from being visible to all community members as a side-effect of device sync. The gate is kind-generic: the relay applies it to every kind in `SHARED_GATED_KINDS` (`buzz-core/src/kind.rs`), currently `30175` and the `30178` team-catalog projection described below. The rules and enforcement surfaces are identical for each member kind. **Rules:** | Event state | Author reads | Foreign reads | |---|---|---| | No `shared` tag | ✅ allowed | ❌ withheld | | `["shared", "true"]` tag | ✅ allowed | ✅ allowed | These rules are enforced at the following relay read surfaces (content and event existence are withheld on all of them): - **REQ historical delivery** — foreign requests silently omit unshared persona events, even in mixed-kind filters (`{kinds:[30175,9]}`). The visibility check is applied **before `ORDER BY … LIMIT`** at the SQL level (`shared_gated_reader` field in `EventQuery`), so a page of newer private personas cannot starve an older shared persona off the candidate set — the catalog's primary all-author query pattern is correctly served. - **NIP-01 `ids` lookup** — knowing an event id does NOT grant access to an unshared persona. The result gate returns nothing. - **Live fan-out** — unshared personas are delivered only to the author's connections. Shared personas fan out community-wide. - **COUNT** — the fast SQL `count_events()` path is bypassed when the filter can match a shared-gated kind. A per-event fallback applies the shared-tag check, preventing existence-leak via COUNT. - **NIP-98 HTTP bridge `/query`** — the same per-event visibility check is applied to the catchall post-processing loop. The SQL-level `shared_gated_reader` clause also applies before `LIMIT`, preventing older shared personas from being starved by newer private ones on paginated catalog queries. A foreign caller POSTing `{kinds:[30175],authors:[victim]}` or a kindless `{ids:[...]}` filter to `/query` receives no unshared persona content. - **NIP-98 HTTP bridge `/count`** — `needs_shared_gate_filtering` forces the per-event fallback path for any filter that can match a shared-gated kind; the fast SQL `count_events()` path is not used. Both the channel-scoped and unconstrained fallback loops apply `event_visible_to_reader`, preventing existence-leak via COUNT over HTTP. - **FTS (NIP-50 search) and `/search`** — no shared-gated kind is in the relay's FTS allowlist (migration 8 indexes only kinds `0, 9, 40002, 45001, 45003`); no FTS result can contain an unshared event. A defense-in-depth check is also present in the bridge search result loop so that a future FTS allowlist change cannot silently reopen the bypass. **Device sync is unaffected.** The sync subscription (`{kinds:[30175], authors:[self]}`) reads the author's own events, which are always returned regardless of shared state. **Opting in to community sharing.** Publish a NIP-33 replacement head for the persona with a `["shared", "true"]` tag. Unsharing is the reverse: republish without the tag. NIP-33 replacement semantics apply (newest `created_at` wins). **`shared` is a tag, not a content field.** Content bytes are hash-pinned as the NIP-01 event id and also used as the `source_version` for persona drift detection. A content-field toggle would look like a definition edit; a tag does not affect content bytes. **Non-goal: side-band existence oracles.** Reaction, report, and event-deletion validation resolves target events by id to check that they exist. These paths intentionally accept arbitrary event references by design — they leak one bit (existence) but never content, and exploiting them requires already possessing a 64-hex event id that unshared personas never expose through any gated read path. Gating these side-band resolvers would require teaching reaction/report validation about persona read semantics with no realistic attack mitigated. If a stricter "zero existence leakage" property is required in future, it is a separate scoped task. ## Security considerations - **No encryption.** System prompts, model names, runtime identifiers, and all configuration are stored unencrypted. Shared persona events are readable community-wide. Operators MUST NOT store secrets in persona event content. - **System prompt protection.** System prompts and `respond_to_allowlist` pubkeys are sensitive. The relay's author-only-unless-shared gate ensures they are not visible to other community members unless the owner explicitly opts in by publishing a `["shared", "true"]` head. Shared persona events are readable community-wide; operators who need additional confidentiality should use relay-level access controls or choose not to share. - **Write authority.** Only the holder of `seckey_o` can publish or replace persona events. NIP-33 replacement is scoped by pubkey — no spoofing risk from other relay members. - **Slug collision across pubkeys.** Two different owners can publish personas with the same slug. Clients MUST always scope queries by author pubkey, not just slug. - **Metadata exposure.** The `(pubkey, kind:30175, slug)` triple reveals persona existence. Event timestamps reveal edit history. - **No owner write authority over agents.** Persona events define *what* an agent should be; they do not grant runtime control over a running agent. The agent consumes the persona at spawn time. Updates to the persona event do not automatically propagate to running agents. - **Sharing a team shares every member's instructions.** A `kind:30178` head carrying `["shared","true"]` exposes the team's own fields *and* the embedded projection of every member — including members whose own `kind:30175` heads are unshared and therefore still private. Clients MUST make this explicit at the point of sharing; the relay cannot infer it. ## Reference test vectors > **TEST KEYS — DO NOT USE IN PRODUCTION.** The keys below are pinned for reproducibility. Production code MUST source randomness from a CSPRNG. ### Inputs ``` seckey_o = 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 schnorr_aux = 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ``` ### Derived ``` pubkey_o = 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 ``` ### Event 1 — create persona with all fields ```jsonc // Body (exact UTF-8, no trailing whitespace): {"display_name":"Test Agent","system_prompt":"You are a test assistant.","avatar_url":"https://example.com/avatar.png","runtime":"goose","model":"claude-opus-4","provider":"anthropic","name_pool":["Alpha","Beta"]} ``` ``` kind = 30175 pubkey = 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 created_at = 1700000000 tags = [["d", "test-agent"]] content = {"display_name":"Test Agent","system_prompt":"You are a test assistant.","avatar_url":"https://example.com/avatar.png","runtime":"goose","model":"claude-opus-4","provider":"anthropic","name_pool":["Alpha","Beta"]} id = sig = ``` ### Event 2 — minimal definition (required fields only) A definition need not carry a prompt — pure-configuration definitions (e.g. provider/model presets) are valid: ```jsonc // Body: {"display_name":"Minimal"} ``` ``` kind = 30175 pubkey = 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 created_at = 1700000001 tags = [["d", "minimal"]] content = {"display_name":"Minimal"} id = sig = ``` ### Event 3 — replacement (same slug, higher `created_at`) ```jsonc // Updated body (system_prompt changed): {"display_name":"Test Agent","system_prompt":"You are an updated test assistant.","avatar_url":"https://example.com/avatar.png","runtime":"goose","model":"claude-opus-4","provider":"anthropic","name_pool":["Alpha","Beta","Gamma"]} ``` ``` kind = 30175 pubkey = 79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798 created_at = 1700000002 tags = [["d", "test-agent"]] content = {"display_name":"Test Agent","system_prompt":"You are an updated test assistant.","avatar_url":"https://example.com/avatar.png","runtime":"goose","model":"claude-opus-4","provider":"anthropic","name_pool":["Alpha","Beta","Gamma"]} id = sig = ``` After Event 3, the head for slug `test-agent` is Event 3 (greatest `created_at`). Event 1 is superseded. ### Head selection with tiebreak If two events share `created_at = 1700000000` and slug `test-agent`, the head is the event with the lexicographically lowest `id` (hex comparison per NIP-01). ### Implementation notes Unlike [NIP-AE](NIP-AE.md), persona events involve no encryption, no HMAC derivation, and no conversation key. The test vectors are standard NIP-33 events with JSON content — implementations need only: 1. Correct NIP-01 event-id serialization: `json.dumps([0, pubkey, created_at, kind, tags, content], separators=(",", ":"), ensure_ascii=False)` over UTF-8 bytes. 2. BIP-340 Schnorr signing with the pinned aux value. 3. JSON serialization of the content body with no trailing whitespace or BOM.