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How the protocol evolves

Proposals are public, and AskThis stewards acceptance under one rule: backward-compatible additions only within a major version (see Governance). New engines and new optional fields are additive and land in a v1.x release; anything that would break an existing implementation waits for a new major version.

Propose a new Ask Target (engine)

An Ask Target is an AI engine a Cited Ask can be handed to. To be added to targets.json, an engine must meet the same contract every shipped target meets:

• A real, publicly reachable AI answer engine — one a reader can open and ask a question of.
• A handoff method:
  • direct — a URL that prefills the prompt, expressed as a template with {q} for the URL-encoded prompt (e.g. https://example.ai/?q={q}); or
  • copy — if the engine has no prefill URL, it uses the clipboard-fallback contract: the home URL opens on the user gesture and the prompt is copied.
• A stable id — a short lowercase key that will not change.
• A neutral, factual label — the engine’s own display name, carrying no marketing claim (the neutral-values rule).

Propose a spec change

Changes to a layer — a new ai:type, a new optional Cited Ask variable, a new policy field — follow the same public process and the same additions-only rule. Describe the change, why it is needed, and how existing implementations remain unaffected.

Where to propose

Open an issue in the public repository — github.com/askthis/protocol. It holds the specification, the registry source, and an Engine Proposal issue template that collects what a proposal needs:

• the engine name and homepage;
• its prefill URL (with {q} where the prompt goes), or confirmation that it needs the copy fallback; and
• for a spec change, the layer affected and the compatibility note above.

Please test the prefill before proposing direct. Several engines accept a ?q= parameter, open normally, and silently discard the prompt — the tab opens with an empty input, and it reads like the implementer’s bug. That is exactly why Gemini, Copilot and DeepSeek are copy in the registry.

Prefer email, or not sure it’s a proposal? hello@askthis.io works just as well — a question that turns out to be a spec ambiguity is worth more to us than a well-formed proposal.

Extending without a proposal

You do not need permission to extend the protocol for your own use — extension never breaks core:

• Your own targets — advertise any engines you support in your own /.well-known/ai-share.json. The registry is the canonical set AskThis ships; it is not a ceiling on what you may route to.
• Unknown ai:type values — consumers fall back to the generic Cited Ask template for any type they do not recognize, exactly as the widget does. New types degrade gracefully rather than failing.

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Next: Changelog — what has shipped, and how versions are announced.