What OSMP is, what it isn't, and what the patent means for you.

[Holberg7]

Q: What is OSMP?
A: A wire protocol that compresses agentic AI instructions into a deterministic encoding any device can decode by table lookup. No inference at the decode layer. 342 opcodes across 26 namespaces. Works across any transport, from a 51-byte LoRa packet to a cloud pipeline.

Q: How is this different from MCP, A2A, or ACP?
A: Those are framework-layer protocols. OSMP is an encoding-layer protocol. It sits beneath any of them as the serialization format. Two agents on different frameworks that share the OSMP dictionary can communicate without modifying either framework.
Do I need to change my agent framework to use it?
No. The MCP server (pip install osmp-mcp) gives your agent encode/decode as tools. One config line. Your framework stays the same.

Q: How do I test it?
A: python3 sdk/python/src/osmp.py runs the benchmark against the canonical test vectors. You'll see per-instruction byte counts and the mean reduction. The MCP server has a benchmark tool built in. The 29-vector framework comparison runs from benchmarks/sal-vs-json/.

Q: What SDKs are available?
A: Python (reference), TypeScript (npm: osmp-protocol), Go. All three are independently verified against the same canonical test suite.

Q: Where are the compression numbers from?
A: 29 real-world vectors from MCP, OpenAI, A2A, CrewAI, and AutoGen. Full methodology, .proto schemas, and reproduction scripts in docs/SAL-efficiency-analysis.md. Run them yourself.

Q: Is this production ready?
A: The protocol works. Three conformant SDKs, MCP server on PyPI, encoding and decoding verified against a canonical test suite. There are zero production deployments so far and no independent audit. If you deploy it, you may be the first. We want to hear what you learn.

Q: What does "patent pending" mean for me?
A: Apache 2.0 with express patent grant. If you implement this spec, you have a license. The patent applies to non-conformant implementations that use equivalent methods. Build on the protocol and you're covered. Full details in PATENT-NOTICE.md.

Q: What's not built yet?
A: C++ firmware-level encoder/decoder for ESP32/nRF52 sovereign nodes. That's the highest-priority contribution target.