The missing legal layer for AI-agent commerce.
An open standard for publishing and cryptographically proving the legal terms behind a transaction — across every major agent-payment protocol (x402, MPP, AP2, ACK) and settlement rail (EVM, Stellar, Hedera, Solana, and more).
🌐 legalcontextprotocol.org · 📄 White papers · 📐 Specification
AI agents can now buy and sell on their own. The payment layer is solved — there are billions of dollars of rails. But the agreement layer is missing: when an agent transacts and something goes wrong, there's no standard way to know what the terms were, whether both sides agreed, which law governs, or how to dispute it.
LCP fills that gap with one idea, layered in increasing strength:
- Publish your terms at one standard URL —
/.well-known/legal-context.json(no blockchain required). - Prove they can't be quietly changed — a SHA-256 hash of the terms.
- Sign — the buyer cryptographically signs that hash: non-repudiable proof of who agreed to what, when.
- Integrate — connect to real institutional recourse: dispute resolution, jurisdiction, remedies.
One required field; everything else is opt-in.
The Legal Context Protocol is co-stewarded by Integra Ledger and the American Arbitration Association (AAA) — pairing commerce-infrastructure engineering with the world's leading dispute-resolution institution.
- David Fisher — CEO, Integra Ledger — lead author and driving force behind LCP.
- Bridget McCormack — CEO, American Arbitration Association — co-led the initiative with David Fisher: co-author of the white paper "Identity, Trust, and the Legal Foundations of Agentic Commerce" and a driving force behind the overall plan.
The LCP technical specification is co-authored by David Fisher and David Berger (Chief Scientist, Integra Ledger).
- legal-context-protocol — the specification, JSON Schema, examples, and governance.
@legalcontext/*— the open-source (Apache-2.0) reference implementation: 48 packages covering the protocol and rail adapters, the buyer gate, and conformance tooling. (Publishing to npm.)
This is the first public introduction of the Legal Context Protocol. We are releasing it openly and actively inviting contributors.
LCP is built to be co-stewarded. We expect — and warmly invite — companies and foundations to take ownership of specific implementations and adapters. A protocol steward such as the x402 Foundation, for example, is a natural long-term owner of the x402 adapter; rail and protocol partners (payment networks, blockchains, standards bodies) are likewise invited to own and maintain their corresponding packages. Per-package ownership is wired through the implementation repo's CODEOWNERS.
Get involved:
- Read the specification and the white papers.
- Propose changes via the SEP process (see the spec repo's
GOVERNANCE.md). - Build — or take ownership of — an adapter or implementation.
Contact: David Fisher, CEO, Integra Ledger — @dafisher2000 · via legalcontextprotocol.org.
Licensed under Apache-2.0.
