The NOMOS Protocol defines an open, vendor-neutral format for packaging governance policies as sealed, machine-executable artifacts.
A .nomos file is a signed JSON document containing extracted policy rules, confidence metadata, and a cryptographic seal. Any compliant runtime can load a .nomos artifact and evaluate decisions against it — deterministically, without calling an AI model at runtime.
Governance policies live in PDFs. AI agents making decisions live in code. NOMOS is the translation layer: a compile step that converts natural-language policy into structured, auditable rules that machines can enforce without interpretation.
Compile-time: A policy document is uploaded to NOMOS Studio. Rules are extracted and verified. A .nomos artifact is sealed.
Runtime: Your system calls the NOMOS Runtime API. Rules are evaluated deterministically. Every verdict comes with an audit hash.
| Path | Description |
|---|---|
spec/NOMOS-SPEC-001.md |
Full protocol specification |
schema/artifact.schema.json |
JSON Schema for .nomos artifact files |
schema/rule.schema.json |
JSON Schema for a single rule object |
examples/lending_policy_v1.nomos |
Example — public lending policy |
examples/healthcare_triage_v1.nomos |
Example — clinical triage protocol |
verify/verify.py |
Reference verifier (Python) |
verify/verify.ts |
Reference verifier (TypeScript/Node) |
# No external dependencies needed for the verifier
python verify/verify.py examples/lending_policy_v1.nomos \
--key deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefnpx tsx verify/verify.ts examples/lending_policy_v1.nomos \
--key deadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefdeadbeefNote: The example artifacts in
examples/are sealed with the public test key above (deadbeef...). Production artifacts use a privateNOMOS_SEAL_KEYheld by the sealing authority.
curl -X POST https://nomosprotocol.com/api/nomos/execute \
-H "x-api-key: <key>" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"artifactId": "lending_policy_v1",
"context": {
"patron_age": 18,
"account_standing": "good",
"item_type": "reference"
}
}'| Tier | Meaning |
|---|---|
DECLARED |
Rules extracted from policy documents only |
CERTIFIED |
Rules triangulated against behavioral decision logs; statistical validation passed |
Every .nomos artifact carries a seal block:
"seal": {
"algorithm": "HMAC-SHA256",
"ts": "2026-01-15T10:30:00.000Z",
"hash": "<sha256-of-canonical-payload>",
"sig": "<hmac-sha256-of-hash>"
}The seal is computed over the artifact body canonicalized per RFC 8785 (JCS). Any modification to any field — including whitespace — produces a different hash and invalidates the signature.
See spec/NOMOS-SPEC-001.md §8 for the full sealing procedure.
This repository tracks the NOMOS artifact format specification. Backward-incompatible changes increment the spec version (NOMOS-SPEC-002, etc.). The spec_version field inside every artifact records which version it was sealed against.
The NOMOS Protocol specification and schemas are released under CC BY 4.0. Implementations may be proprietary.
- Hosted runtime: nomosprotocol.com
- Protocol Spec: nomosprotocol.com/spec
- API Reference: nomosprotocol.com/docs