FAQ
Common questions about AIEP — what it is, what it is not, and how adoption works.
Is AIEP a search engine?
No. Search engines crawl, index, and rank pages — they answer which page is most relevant? AIEP answers a different question: is this claim verifiable, and what evidence supports it?
In a world where AI systems retrieve knowledge and act on it autonomously, ranking is an inadequate signal. A highly-ranked page that asserts something confidently is not the same as a structured artefact that carries its evidence, its provenance, and a hash that confirms it has not changed since publication.
AIEP does not replace search. It provides the layer beneath search that makes retrieval trustworthy once a source has been found.
Does AIEP block adoption?
AIEP does the opposite. Open use is always permitted without registration, fee, or permission.
Anyone can implement the protocol, publish Mirror endpoints, use the canonical schemas, and build tools on the retrieval pattern. The Apache 2.0 licence covers the open-source codebase. The protocol specification is public. The schemas are public.
The compliance surface exists only to protect one specific claim: “AIEP Certified”. If you do not make that claim, compliance has nothing to say about your implementation.
Does AIEP replace AI models?
No. Language models are highly capable at reasoning, synthesis, summarisation, and generation. What they structurally cannot do is verify current, source-attributed, evidence-backed knowledge at retrieval time.
AIEP provides that layer. A model that retrieves from AIEP-conformant sources knows the provenance of what it retrieved, can verify the hash, can check the plausibility gate, and can confirm the evidence chain.
Is AIEP a blockchain?
No. AIEP does not use distributed consensus for record ordering. It is a protocol for publishing and verifying artefacts using cryptographic hashes, structured schemas, and canonical normalisation.
Records are append-only and hash-chained — but verification does not require a distributed ledger, a token, or a consensus committee. Any party with the artefacts and the schema can verify independently.
Do I need a licence to use AIEP?
Not for open adoption. The Apache 2.0 licence covers the five open-source repositories. The protocol specification, canonical schemas, and P66/P67 declaration formats are all public.
A commercial licence is required only if your implementation uses specifications under patent application (Tier 1 and above).
What is the “AIEP Certified” claim?
“AIEP Certified” is a specific, verifiable claim. It requires:
- A registered issuer identity on the AIEP registry
- A certificate artefact published at a stable URL and conformant to the canonical schema
- A
CertificateHashrecomputable by any third party from your published ledger entries
If you implement AIEP without making this claim, you are not subject to the certification requirements.
What is the GENOME SDK?
The AIEP GENOME SDK (kernel v1.2.0) is the reference implementation and production deployment foundation. It contains the frozen kernel (R1–R8 canonical primitives), the Flexibility Contract (AIEP-FC-001), and the governance layer.
The SDK has two deployment paths:
- Build — construct a new AI-governed system with AIEP compliance as a native property
- Retrofit — wrap any existing AI deployment in the AIEP compliance layer without architectural rebuild
The SDK is available to Tier 1+ licensees and evaluated hardware partners under NDA.
→ GENOME & Swarm · Get Started
Is AIEP just for regulated industries?
No. The compliance certification surface (Tier 2) is designed for regulated sectors — healthcare institutions, financial services, pharmaceutical. But Tier 1 (governed substrate) is broadly applicable to any enterprise or consumer AI deployment that benefits from audit-grade evidence chains and deterministic recall.
Open-source adoption has no tier requirement at all.
Who built AIEP?
AIEP was designed and built by the Protocol Architect. AI tools assisted in generating documentation and code during development. The ideas, principles, and overall thesis behind AIEP originate with the Protocol Architect.
26 patent applications are registered (GB numbers confirmed): 9 filed November 2025; 9 filed 07 April 2026; 6 filed 08 April 2026; 2 filed 11 April 2026.