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What is ALX?

ALX Protocol represents digital artifacts as composable Blocks. Each Block carries JSON-serializable content and declared parent relationships. Deterministic identities bind the content and parent relationships to the Block.

Applications define artifact meaning. ALX Protocol defines the deterministic Block structure, identity, declared lineage, and local verification rules independently of storage, transport, or anchoring.

Protocol Boundary​

ALX does not prescribe storage, transport, indexing, access control, retention, moderation, or anchoring. Applications and infrastructure providers select these services around the protocol. Blockchain commitments remain optional evidence layers for applications that require an on-chain record.

Deterministic Identity​

ALX gives each Block two deterministic identities: contentHash for canonicalized content and blockHash for canonicalized content with the declared parent set. Independent implementations can recompute both identities from protocol data. Block Identity gives the derivation rules for each one.

Traceable Context for Intelligent Systems​

Declared parent relationships connect sources, intermediate results, model outputs, agent handoffs, evaluations, and decisions into derivation graphs. Applications and intelligent systems can traverse available relationships and use prior Blocks as structured context. Lineage Graphs describes the operations a graph supports.

When to Use ALX​

Use ALX when outputs need to remain identifiable, traceable, and composable across systems and workflows.

ALX is useful when:

  • Multiple agents, applications, or organizations exchange outputs.
  • Downstream systems need to inspect declared dependencies.
  • Workflows build iteratively on previous results.
  • Independent parties need to recompute artifact identities.
  • Provenance or derivation needs to remain connected to an output.
  • Prior work needs to become structured context for subsequent processing.

Application Areas​

ALX supports application areas including:

  • AI and agent workflows, including retrieval-augmented generation.
  • Software development and release provenance.
  • Research, scientific, and data workflows.
  • Document, knowledge, and digital media systems.
  • Compliance, audit, and multi-organization records.

Across these application areas, ALX provides deterministic identity, explicit dependencies, independent verification, and composable lineage across systems, organizations, and trust boundaries.