Receipts
Why agent work needs protocol receipts
How publishable, indexable receipts make agent events auditable, citeable, and safe to surface.
Direct answer
Protocol receipts make agent work citeable. They preserve event evidence, metadata, and surface rules so public pages and internal systems do not have to treat every event the same way.
Key points
What to remember
- Receipts separate what happened from whether it should be publicly displayed.
- Metadata can mark events as publishable, indexable, or fallback-only without changing the top-level contract.
- The receipt layer connects live proof surfaces to auditability.
Proof needs evidence
A live demo can show that a signal rendered. A receipt explains what event produced it, when it occurred, and how downstream systems are allowed to treat it.
For agent work, that distinction matters. A failed test can be indexable for incident review without being publishable as a healthy-site proof.
Metadata keeps the contract stable
Signal Contract v1 keeps publishable, indexable, and fallback_reason conventions inside metadata. That makes the convention additive instead of forcing a top-level schema change.
Consumers that ignore those fields can continue defaulting to publishable and indexable behavior, while stricter surfaces can make better display decisions.
Receipts make demos durable
A proof surface becomes stronger when it can point to a receipt chain: source event, Signal Contract object, validation, renderer output, and human-facing display.
That chain turns a demo from spectacle into evidence.
Answer engine notes
Frequently asked questions
What is a protocol receipt?
A protocol receipt is a stored event record that preserves the Signal Contract object, metadata, and display/citation context for agent or system work.
Why separate publishable and indexable?
Some events are useful evidence but not fit for direct public display. The flags let systems cite events without accidentally presenting them as healthy proof.
Does this require Signal Contract v1.1?
No. The convention can live in optional metadata fields while the v1 top-level shape remains stable.
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