Version: 1.0.0-rc.8
Date: 2026-08-19
Status: Draft release candidate
Authors: Ivan Oparin, Alexey Grigorev
License: MIT
Curator is an open protocol for declarative, reproducible, security-gated installation of AI agent skills. It defines portable skill and project manifests, deterministic dependency closure and installation artifacts, MCP requirements, and a cryptographically verifiable audit-registry protocol.
The specification is implementation-neutral. A conforming manager may use any language, command name, machine-home directory, environment variables, user interface, or internal architecture. Compatibility identifiers inherited from the deployed protocol remain unchanged:
Skillfile.jsonandSkillfile.dev.json;agent-skill.json(canonical) andcsk-skill.json(legacy read alias);.csk-install.jsonand.csk-managed.json;.agents/as the portable project installation root.
These names are wire identifiers, not ownership claims by a particular implementation.
The release consists of the following documents and artifacts:
| Part | Role |
|---|---|
| Protocol core | Normative package, manifest, identity, closure, hashing, and marker rules |
| Registry protocol | Normative canonical JSON, signatures, records, snapshots, log, bundles, cache, and HTTP rules |
| Assurance protocol | Normative portable/verified selection, provider, evidence, identity, and fail-closed rules |
| Manager profile | Normative installation lifecycle, scopes, adapters, MCP, audit, and shell behavior |
| Registry service profile | Normative production guarantees for pagination, transactions, durability, recovery, keys, and operations |
| Curator CLI | Informative command and CI guide for the Go implementation |
| Conformance | Normative conformance classes, vectors, and execution contract |
| External repositories | Author and operator guide for schema 7 and go-repository-v1 |
| Assurance modes | Operator guidance for portable and separately installed verified providers |
schemas/v1 |
Normative JSON Schemas for every versioned wire object |
conformance/v1 |
Normative positive and negative test vectors |
| Release checklist | Candidate, independent review, signing, checksum, and attestation gates |
The normative keywords MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, NOT RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL are interpreted as described by RFC 2119 and RFC 8174 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals.
JSON Schemas define structural validity. Normative prose defines semantic behavior not expressible in a schema. Conformance vectors define exact bytes and required outcomes. If these sources disagree, the release is defective; an implementation is never the normative oracle.
- Curator is the Go reference implementation and provides static binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
- csk is an independent Python implementation.
- Curator Skill Registry is an implementation of the registry-service profile.
The implementations are evidence that the protocol is independently implementable. Conformance is established only by the released schemas and shared test vectors, not by copying behavior from either codebase.
1.0.0-rc.8 is a draft candidate. Portable remains the default CLI-only mode.
Verified mode is explicit, requires the platform-neutral
host-execution-provider-v1 contract, and fails before execution rather than
silently downgrading. Provider binaries are separately installed trusted host
components and are never skill-vendored artifacts. This candidate specifies
the common contract for macOS, Linux, and Windows but ships no provider and
emits no verified platform claim. Exact candidate-suite identity is recorded in
release/1.0.0-rc.8.json; rc.7 and earlier release
metadata remain byte-frozen historical evidence. Review evidence is published
under reviews/. See
COMPATIBILITY.md,
SECURITY.md, and GOVERNANCE.md.
This project is part of the open-source ecosystem of Relux Works, an AI-native software development studio.
- Full catalog: relux.works/en/open-source
- Contact: ivan@relux.works