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Atomic Content Protocol

ACO Examples

Three examples showing how ACOs look in practice: the minimum valid form, a fully enriched real-world object, and a Container grouping multiple ACOs.

Example 1: Minimal ACO

Section titled “Example 1: Minimal ACO”

The smallest valid ACO. Six required fields, no optional fields, content body present.

---
id: "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000"
acp_version: "0.2"
object_type: "aco"
source_type: "manual"
created: "2026-04-10T12:00:00Z"
author:
  id: "user-001"
  name: "Kyle Hudson"
---


## Notes on ACP


ACP defines a universal format for knowledge objects. Each object is a Markdown
file with structured YAML frontmatter — readable by humans and AI alike.


Key principles:
- Six required fields. Everything else optional.
- Immutable identity and provenance fields.
- Forward-compatible: implementations must ignore unknown fields.

This is a valid ACO. It can be opened in any text editor, processed by any Markdown parser, and consumed by any ACP-compliant implementation.

Example 2: Enriched ACO

Section titled “Example 2: Enriched ACO”

A realistic ACO captured from a web article and enriched by AI. This is from the ACP schema spec (section 6).

---
id: "01952f8a-3b4c-7d5e-6f07-a8b9c0d1e2f3"
acp_version: "0.2"
object_type: "aco"
source_type: "link"
created: "2026-02-23T10:30:00Z"
modified: "2026-02-23T10:31:05Z"
author:
  id: "0c56a508-4720-424e-810b-dde9d4319c88"
  name: "Kyle Hudson"


title: "Pocket Is Dead. Your Bookmarks Died With It."
language: "en"
content_hash: "sha256:e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"
token_counts:
  cl100k: 1847
  claude: 1802
  approximate: 1830


tags: ["content-portability", "platform-risk", "bookmarks", "pocket"]
classification: "analysis"
key_entities:
  - type: "organization"
    name: "Mozilla"
    confidence: 0.99
  - type: "product"
    name: "Pocket"
    confidence: 0.99
  - type: "concept"
    name: "platform lock-in"
    confidence: 0.92


source_url: "https://example.com/pocket-is-dead"


summary: "Analysis of Pocket's shutdown in July 2025 and how it erased millions of users' saved content overnight. Makes the case that platform-locked content is inherently fragile and that portable, self-describing knowledge objects are the only durable alternative."
confidence: 0.88
provenance:
  summary:
    model: "gpt-4o-mini"
    version: "2024-07-18"
    timestamp: "2026-02-23T10:31:00Z"
    confidence: 0.93
  tags:
    model: "gpt-4o-mini"
    version: "2024-07-18"
    timestamp: "2026-02-23T10:31:00Z"
    confidence: 0.89
  key_entities:
    model: "gpt-4o-mini"
    version: "2024-07-18"
    timestamp: "2026-02-23T10:31:00Z"
    confidence: 0.95


relationships:
  - rel_type: "supports"
    target_id: "01952a3b-0000-0000-0000-acp-vision-001"
    confidence: 0.88
    provenance:
      model: "gpt-4o-mini"
      timestamp: "2026-02-23T10:31:00Z"


visibility: "public"
agent_accessible: true
rights: "CC-BY-4.0"
expiration: null
status: "final"
---


# Pocket Is Dead. Your Bookmarks Died With It.


In July 2025, Mozilla shut down Pocket. By November, even the export tool was gone.
Millions of users lost years of saved articles, highlights, and tags — not because
the content disappeared from the web, but because their *references* to it were
locked inside a platform that stopped existing.


This is the fundamental fragility of platform-locked content...


[Content continues]

What to notice in this example

Section titled “What to notice in this example”
  • source_type: "link" triggers the requirement for source_url.
  • content_hash uses the "sha256:<hex>" format, computed on the content body only.
  • token_counts has three tokenizer keys — useful for multi-model agents.
  • key_entities are typed objects with confidence scores, not flat strings.
  • provenance covers three auto-generated fields: summary, tags, key_entities. Each records the model, version, timestamp, and confidence.
  • confidence: 0.88 is the ACO-level behavioral signal — distinct from the per-field provenance confidence scores.
  • The relationships edge is auto-detected (has confidence and provenance). The source ACO “supports” a target ACO with high confidence.
  • expiration: null explicitly marks this as permanent.

Example 3: Container with Three ACOs

Section titled “Example 3: Container with Three ACOs”

A Container grouping three related ACOs into a curated collection.

---
id: "01952a3b-cccc-0000-0000-000000000001"
acp_version: "0.2"
object_type: "container"
created: "2026-02-20T08:00:00Z"
modified: "2026-02-23T14:00:00Z"
author:
  id: "user-uuid-here"
  name: "Kyle Hudson"


title: "MCP Protocol Research"
summary: "A curated collection of resources on the Model Context Protocol, covering spec evolution, ecosystem mapping, security concerns, and integration patterns."
tags: ["mcp", "research", "protocols"]


objects:
  - "01952f8a-3b4c-7d5e-6f07-a8b9c0d1e2f3"
  - "01952a3b-0000-0000-0000-000000000002"
  - "01952a3b-0000-0000-0000-000000000003"


token_counts:
  cl100k: 12450
  claude: 12180
  approximate: 12300


visibility: "public"
agent_accessible: true
rights: "CC-BY-4.0"
status: "final"
---


This collection tracks the evolution of the Model Context Protocol from initial
Anthropic release through ecosystem adoption. The three items cover the original
spec, early ecosystem tooling, and security analysis from the research community.

What to notice in this example

Section titled “What to notice in this example”
  • object_type: "container" — not "aco". Containers do not have source_type.
  • objects is an ordered array of ACO IDs. The order is the curation sequence.
  • token_counts on a Container is the sum of token counts across all contained ACOs.
  • The Container has its own summary, tags, and visibility — independent of the ACOs it contains.
  • The Markdown body is a curator’s note about why these objects are grouped.
  • Containment is by reference. Removing an ID from objects does not delete the ACO.