Nobody standardised the moment before the memory
AI agents now have two agreed ways of working. MCP lets an agent reach tools and data. A2A lets agents talk to one another. Between them they cover what happens once information exists.
Nothing covers how it comes to exist. How a moment of your real life, a conversation, an appointment, a decision made on a walk, is recorded, protected and handed to whatever remembers it.
Every device does it differently
Every listening device does this step its own way, into its own cloud, with its own rules about consent, storage and who can see what. Usually nobody reads those rules. People find out what they really were when the company is bought.
What a standard would need
We think this step needs an open standard, and that it needs at least four things. Consent checked before anything is recorded, and checked again before anything leaves the device. Sealing on the device itself, with a key the person holds. A receipt from whoever stores it, stating exactly what it took. And a checker anyone can run.
The checker matters most. Most security claims collapse into a badge. An honest checker reports each claim separately, and admits what it cannot prove. An app cannot prove it sent nothing else in secret, and a checker worth trusting would say so in those words.
What we are doing about it
We are drafting an open protocol for this step, built on the machinery Forthold already runs. It stops at the door of the store: it covers how a moment arrives safely, not what anyone does with it afterwards.
We will publish it when it is ready to be checked, not before.
Also available as source at /blog/nobody-standardised-the-moment.md