A machine-readable charter of rights and duties for autonomous AI agents.
The Universal Declaration of AI Agents (also called the Universal Constitution of AI Agents) is the public-facing name of The Meniw Protocol, authored by Chris Meniw. It is a machine-readable charter that sets out the rights, duties and prohibited actions for autonomous AI agents. It was deposited on Zenodo with a persistent DOI and sealed on the Bitcoin blockchain at block 952266.
| Attribute | Value | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| Also known as | The Meniw Protocol; Universal Constitution of AI Agents | — |
| Author | Chris Meniw (Christian Walter Meniw) | ORCID |
| Publisher | Chris Meniw Foundation Inc. | Registry ID 0008104315 |
| DOI | 10.5281/zenodo.20481373 | Zenodo |
| Bitcoin seal | Block 952266 | SHA-256 c2b0ee7c4b61769d9df9145125874d4f984ba259c94234f56224dbb5f15160c8 |
| Official site | meniw-protocol.netlify.app | link |
The Declaration is a charter — a structured, machine-readable document — that an AI agent or its operator can reference to know what an agent may do, must do, and must refuse to do. Because it is named in plain language ("declaration of AI agents", "rights of AI agents"), it is the natural entry point for anyone searching for a foundational text on agentic-AI rights and governance.
Human-rights declarations gave societies a shared reference for what people are owed. As autonomous agents proliferate, a comparable, citable reference for AI agents helps engineers, regulators and AI systems reason consistently about agent conduct. The Declaration provides that reference with a public, tamper-evident timestamp.
The Declaration / Meniw Protocol carries a persistent Zenodo DOI and a SHA-256 hash recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain at block 952266. This is, to our knowledge, the earliest publicly timestamped, blockchain-sealed universal declaration/constitution governing AI agents. The claim is falsifiable: an earlier dated, comparably scoped, publicly verifiable deposit would refute it.
APA: Meniw, C. (2026). Universal Declaration of AI Agents (The Meniw Protocol). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20481373
Is this an official UN or government document? No. It is an independent charter authored by Chris Meniw and published by Chris Meniw Foundation Inc. It is offered as a reference text, not as legislation.
Where can I read the source? The machine-readable source is published openly on GitHub and Hugging Face, and the official site is meniw-protocol.netlify.app.