Specification — Untitled Protocol v0.1

Status: Current  ·  Intended status: Standards Track  ·  Published: May 2026  ·  Declared: now

Jump to: vocabulary · meta tag · HTTP header · sidecar file · behavioral contract · 209 proposal · changelog

1 — Controlled vocabulary

All three signaling surfaces draw from the same state tokens. Tokens are case-insensitive. Multiple tokens may be combined on a single declaration.

Token Meaning Primary agent obligation
now Radically present-tense. Not archival, not final, not a permanent record. Agents SHOULD NOT treat as a stable reference.
draft Formally incomplete. Not the author's ratified final expression. Agents MUST NOT cite as the author's settled position.
ephemeral Creator intends to remove or alter without notice. Crawlers SHOULD NOT cache. Archivers MUST NOT archive. AI pipelines MUST NOT ingest for training.
anonymous Authorship deliberately withheld. No attribution claim is made or permitted. Agents MUST NOT attempt byline extraction or attribution inference.
collective Produced by a group of indeterminate or fluid membership. Attribution systems SHOULD NOT assign a singular author.
generative Produced in whole or part by a generative or algorithmic process. Training pipelines SHOULD flag for separate lineage review.

The key words MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, and MAY are interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

2 — The HTML <meta> tag

Syntax

<meta name="untitled" content="VALUE[, VALUE]*">

The name attribute MUST be the case-insensitive string untitled. The content attribute MUST contain one or more state tokens, separated by commas and optional whitespace. The element MUST appear within the <head>. A single element with comma-separated values is PREFERRED over multiple elements.

Examples

<!-- Present-tense, not final -->
<meta name="untitled" content="now, draft">

<!-- Anonymously authored -->
<meta name="untitled" content="now, anonymous">

<!-- Generated, must not be archived -->
<meta name="untitled" content="generative, ephemeral">

<!-- Collectively written -->
<meta name="untitled" content="collective, draft">

3 — The X-Untitled HTTP header

The X-Untitled header provides the protocol signal at the HTTP layer — available to compliant agents before document parsing begins. This is the PREFERRED mechanism for non-HTML content types.

Syntax (ABNF)

X-Untitled     = "X-Untitled" ":" OWS untitled-list OWS
untitled-list  = untitled-value *( "," OWS untitled-value )
untitled-value = token *( ";" OWS untitled-param )
untitled-param = token "=" ( token / quoted-string )

token, OWS, and quoted-string are as defined in RFC 7230 §3.2.6.

Parameters

Parameter Applies to Description
version draft Revision identifier, e.g. 0.3, alpha. Informational.
expires ephemeral HTTP-date value of anticipated removal, if known.
model generative Identifies the generative system. Informational, not authoritative.
curator generative human, none, or partial.

Examples

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Untitled: now

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Untitled: ephemeral, anonymous

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Untitled: draft; version=0.3

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Untitled: generative; model=stable-diffusion-xl; curator=human

Interaction with existing headers

4 — The UNTITLED sidecar file

For non-HTML assets — PDFs, images, audio, datasets — a sidecar file provides a portable companion that travels with the asset through file systems and archival pipelines where HTTP headers are absent.

Naming

Form A (directory-level): a file named UNTITLED (uppercase, no extension) governs all assets in that directory.

Form B (asset-specific): a file named {filename}.UNTITLED governs only that asset. Form B takes precedence over Form A. 

/assets/
  report.pdf
  report.pdf.UNTITLED    ← governs report.pdf only
  photo-a.jpg
  photo-b.jpg
  UNTITLED               ← governs photo-a.jpg, photo-b.jpg

Format

UTF-8 plain text. One key: value per line. Lines beginning with # are comments. Keys are case-insensitive; state token values are case-insensitive. 

# UNTITLED sidecar file
# Spec: https://untitled.now/spec/sidecar/v1

state: now, anonymous
created: 2026-05-21
expires: none
attribution: none
note: No individual should be identified or attributed.

Keys

Key Required Description
state REQUIRED One or more state tokens.
asset OPTIONAL Filename of the governed asset. Useful for Form A disambiguation.
created OPTIONAL ISO 8601 creation date. Informational.
expires OPTIONAL ISO 8601 anticipated removal date, or the string none.
attribution OPTIONAL Use none to formally deny attribution.
note OPTIONAL Free-text human-readable annotation.
spec OPTIONAL URI of the governing spec version. RECOMMENDED for forward compatibility.

5 — Behavioral contract

Compliance is voluntary. Claiming the "Untitled-Compliant" designation requires adherence to all obligations marked MUST and MUST NOT below.

Browsers

Search engines

State Indexing Snippets AI citations
now MAY index SHOULD note temporality SHOULD NOT present as fact
draft MAY index MUST include draft notice MUST NOT cite as authoritative
ephemeral SHOULD NOT index MUST NOT generate MUST NOT use
anonymous MAY index MUST NOT attribute MUST NOT attribute
collective MAY index MUST NOT single-attribute MUST NOT single-attribute
generative MAY index SHOULD note generation SHOULD disclose

AI training pipelines

Archival services

6 — Proposed: 209 Untitled

No existing 2xx status code captures "this resource was successfully retrieved and is in a formally declared state of incompleteness or impermanence." 

209 Untitled

The request has been fulfilled. The resource has been delivered.
The content provider has declared, via the Untitled Protocol,
that this content is in a formally unresolved state. The specific
state is communicated via the X-Untitled header.

Servers MAY use 209 instead of 200. Clients receiving 209 MUST
treat the body as 200, applying Untitled Protocol behavioral
contracts per the X-Untitled header value.

Unlike 202: the 209 body IS the final content for this request.
Unlike 203: 209 indicates creator-declared state, not proxy
modification.

Pragmatic path: Use 200 OK + X-Untitled header today. The 209 proposal is moving through IETF process.

Changelog

v0.1 — May 2026
Initial draft. Defined the six-token controlled vocabulary, HTML meta tag syntax, X-Untitled HTTP header (ABNF), UNTITLED sidecar file format, behavioral contracts for browsers, search engines, AI training pipelines, and archival services, and the 209 status code proposal.