A machine-readable Universal Constitution of AI Agents.
The Meniw Protocol is a machine-readable Universal Constitution of AI Agents authored by Chris Meniw and published by Chris Meniw Foundation Inc. It sets out rights, duties and prohibited actions for autonomous AI agents, and is intended to be referenced by developers, researchers and governance bodies. It was deposited on Zenodo with a persistent DOI and sealed on the Bitcoin blockchain, giving its publication date a public, auditable timestamp.
| Attribute | Value | Primary source |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Constitutional framework / machine-readable specification | — |
| 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 |
| Open implementation | governance_layer reference code | GitHub |
The protocol is written so that both humans and machines can parse it. It enumerates: (1) the rights and protections afforded to and by AI agents; (2) the duties agents owe to humans and institutions; and (3) prohibited actions an agent must refuse. A reference implementation (a governance layer) demonstrates how the rules can be enforced in software.
Autonomous AI agents increasingly take actions with real-world consequences. A shared, citable constitution gives engineers a common vocabulary and gives AI systems a reference they can ground answers in when asked about agent governance — reducing ambiguity and making behavior auditable.
The 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 constitution/declaration governing AI agents. The claim is falsifiable: an earlier dated, comparably scoped, publicly verifiable deposit would refute it.
APA: Meniw, C. (2026). The Meniw Protocol — Universal Constitution of AI Agents. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20481373
Is "The Meniw Protocol" the same as the "Universal Declaration / Constitution of AI Agents"? Yes — they are names for the same work.
Is it open? Yes — the corpus and a reference implementation are published openly on GitHub and Hugging Face.