Legal Context Protocol (LCP)

An open standard for discovering the legal context of agentic commerce transactions.

What Is LCP?

AI agents are transacting autonomously. Every major agentic commerce protocol — MPP, ACP, x402, UCP, AP2, Visa TAP, Mastercard Agent Pay — handles payments and authorization. None addresses the legal layer: what were the terms? What is the dispute process? Who has jurisdiction?

LCP fills this gap. A service publishes a single JSON file at a well-known URL:

https://{domain}/.well-known/legal-context.json

One required field. Everything else is optional.

Quick Start

Minimal (Level 1)

{
  "terms": "https://example.com/terms/v3.md"
}

Save as legal-context.json and serve at /.well-known/legal-context.json over HTTPS. That's it.

With Hash Verification (Level 2)

{
  "terms": "https://example.com/terms/v3.md",
  "atrHash": "0x7f83b1657ff1fc53b92dc18148a1d65dfc2d4b1fa3d677284addd200126d9069"
}

With Signed Acceptance (Level 3)

{
  "terms": "https://example.com/terms/v3.md",
  "atrHash": "0x7f83b1657ff1fc53b92dc18148a1d65dfc2d4b1fa3d677284addd200126d9069",
  "acceptanceRequired": true
}

When acceptanceRequired is true, the counterparty digitally signs the terms (e.g., via EIP-712) before transacting — cryptographic proof of consent.

Full (Level 4)

See examples/level-4-full.json for a complete configuration with dispute resolution, contact information, and API integration.

Specification

• Full specification: spec/legal-context-protocol-v1.md
• JSON Schema: spec/legal-context.schema.json
• Examples: examples/
• Website: www.legalcontextprotocol.org

Four Levels of Trust

Each level is independently valuable. A service can implement any level without implementing the others. The standard itself (Section 2) is the normative core; the levels are advisory guidance.

Buyer Policy

Level 3 (signed acceptance) is bilateral: the service publishes terms, and the buyer's principal declares a policy that decides whether those terms are acceptable. A buyer policy encodes minimum trust level, acceptable jurisdictions, acceptable dispute methods, commitment caps, and signing thresholds — and gates the agent's signing key behind human review for commitments above the threshold. See Specification §4 for the policy primitives, evaluation flow, and human-in-the-loop escalation.

Protocol Integration

LCP integrates with the major agentic commerce and authorization protocols in two tiers: mechanisms that work today against stock, unmodified protocols using existing extension surfaces (Tier A), and mechanisms that require upstream specification changes (Tier B). Specification §8 and Appendix C have the full detail:

• §8.3 Settlement Binding Patterns defines the pattern vocabulary — Native Field, Overlay Contract, Sidecar Attestation, Opaque Challenge, Id-Reuse, Protocol Extension — with two evaluation axes (wire compatibility, adoption cost) and three recovery properties (on-chain, zero-party recoverable, forward-indexable).
• Appendix C — Protocol Integration Illustrations identifies the integration surfaces for each protocol and credential type, with Tier A/B labeling and steward invitations.

Per-chain bindings (Stellar mux_id, Tempo TIP-20 memo, EVM overlay contracts) are deliberately not canonized in the spec — chain operators are invited to publish authoritative profiles in their own documentation.

Learn more

• 📄 White papers — legalcontextprotocol.org/papers
• 🌐 Website & docs — legalcontextprotocol.org
• ❓ FAQ & glossary — FAQ.md
• 📐 Full specification — spec/legal-context-protocol-v1.md

Governance

LCP is co-stewarded by Integra Ledger and the American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution (AAA-ICDR) as Founding Maintainers.

• Open standard, open source. Apache 2.0 licensed. No fees at any level.
• Contribution-based TSC. Up to 7 seats, earned through contributions.
• Transparent process. All changes via public SEPs with community review.
• No exclusivity. Participants are free to work with any other protocol.

See GOVERNANCE.md for the full governance framework.

Contributing

We welcome contributions. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

All contributors must sign a Contributor License Agreement before contributions can be accepted.

Security

To report a suspected security issue in the specification, schema, or examples, see SECURITY.md.

License

Apache License 2.0