GRIP: The Governed Runtime Intent Protocol — An Open Protocol for Authorised, Bounded and Attributable Agent Execution

Agentic AI systems act — they call tools, spend money, message people, and change production state — yet the protocols connecting them standardise only capability. GRIP is a small, open protocol that makes agent work authorised before, bounded at an enforcing gate, and cryptographically attributable and integrity-verifiable afterwards, independent of model, framework or vendor: six signed JSON objects on one hash chain (Mandate, Grant, Receipt, Stop, Settlement, Context Envelope), a five-family act registry, a typed denial-reason registry, and four conformance levels. Status: Request for Comments. Proposed, not adopted; no implementers outside the authors. The specification artifacts — JSON Schemas, five registries, the eight-rule chain verifier, seven signed conformance vectors and the conformance runner — are served at grip.foxora.dev.