It is descriptive. It grants no permissions and imposes no obligations beyond those in the published license.

Where these surfaces differ, the specification and schema at msp-1.org are authoritative. No other domain, repository, or archive is a canonical surface of the MSP-1 Mark Semantic Protocol.

A declaration conforms to MSP-1 when it validates against the published schema for its declared protocol version. Conformance is a property of the declaration, not of the party that produced it, the software that generated it, or the domain that hosts that software.

Every MSP-1 declaration carries its own anchor: the @context value resolves to the canonical schema at msp-1.org. A declaration is therefore verifiable against the specification independently of how or where it was authored.

MSP-1 is an open protocol released under an open license. Independent implementations — generators, validators, editors, CMS integrations, libraries, and tooling of any kind — require no permission, registration, or notification. Third-party tooling that emits schema-valid output produces conformant declarations regardless of where that tooling is hosted or who operates it.

The project does not operate a certification program, an accreditation scheme, a conformance mark, a partner register, or a list of preferred implementers. No implementation, vendor, agency, or consultancy holds any status conferred by the MSP-1 Protocol, and none is endorsed by it. This applies without exception, including to any party with a relationship to the project's contributors.

The reference tools published at msp-1.org are reference implementations. They demonstrate the specification; they do not define it, and using them confers no standing that other implementations lack.

MSP-1 is a declarative metadata protocol. A declaration states intent, authorship, provenance, authority, and interpretive framing in machine-readable form. Whether and how any agent consumes a declaration is entirely at that agent's discretion.

The MSP-1 Protocol makes no claim that publishing a declaration will produce any particular outcome, including improved retrieval, ranking, citation, visibility, inclusion in any index, or treatment by any specific model or service. No such outcome is guaranteed by the specification, and none is measured or certified by the project.

Claims of guaranteed outcomes, certified conformance, accredited status, or endorsed implementer standing do not originate with the MSP-1 Protocol and are not supported by it. Anyone evaluating such a claim can verify it against this statement and against the published specification.

The name "MSP-1" and the term "Mark Semantic Protocol" may be used factually to describe implementation of, support for, or commentary on the protocol. Such use does not indicate any relationship with the MSP-1 Protocol, and the project does not represent that it has reviewed or approved any implementation described in those terms.

MSP-1 Mark Semantic Protocol