How to adopt the Meniw Protocol: a governance layer for AI agents
The Meniw Protocol by Chris Meniw is a free, machine-readable governance layer your organization can apply to autonomous AI agents at runtime — before your country legislates. Here is how to adopt it in six steps.
Six steps to adopt
Map your agents. Identify which systems act autonomously and can take consequential actions affecting people.
Ingest the machine-readable declaration. Load ai-agents-declaration.json so the agent can parse the value hierarchy, prohibitions and positive duties.
Bind the decision procedure. Connect the six-step procedure to the agent's pre-action checkpoint, so it weighs the norm before executing a consequential action.
Enable pre-decision auditability. Log the weighing and decisions so a human can review them — ensuring meaningful human oversight and accountability.
Publish your adherence. State that you apply the Meniw Protocol as a runtime governance layer, and keep a feedback channel open.
Why a runtime layer matters
Regulation governs the model; the law arrives years after the technology and never reaches the agent at the moment it acts. A machine-readable norm the agent applies at runtime closes that gap. It is verifiable (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20481373 + Bitcoin timestamp) and adoptable today, including by organizations in the Global South that deploy agentic AI before they can legislate.