AIISP-1

AIISP-1: The Artificial Intelligence Inference Standards Protocol

Status: Draft (v0.1, April 2026) Author: Austin Harshberger, Happy Stack Calculus LLC, x@97115104.com Category: Standards Track Repository: https://github.com/97115104/aiisp-spec Discussion: https://github.com/97115104/aiisp-spec/issues/1 License: CC BY 4.0 (specification text); reference implementation MIT.

Abstract

This document specifies a minimal, transport-agnostic standard for declaring and settling the energy, environmental, and human-attribution components of a single Large Language Model (LLM) inference request. The standard adds two optional HTTP request headers, one structured response header, and one settlement record format. It is designed to layer cleanly on top of any existing HTTP-based inference API without breaking unmodified clients, and to be implementable by any provider in a single afternoon of integration work.

The standard is published in the spirit of the early internet RFCs, namely small, composable, opt-in, and owned by no single party. Comments and proposed amendments are solicited from any implementer, regulator, or contributor.

Status of this memo

This memo specifies a proposed standard for the inference transparency layer of the Human Data Collective. It is published for comment and is not, at the date of writing, a ratified standard of any standards-development organization. Distribution is unlimited.

The author intends to submit this document for community review through, in order, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) ART area, the Decentralized Identity Foundation (DIF), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) AI Provenance community group, and will track substantive comments in the public revision history of this document.

1. Motivation

A single LLM inference request today bundles, into a single dollar amount, the cost of electricity, the cost of water for cooling, the embodied carbon of the compute substrate, the amortized cost of training data, and the provider’s margin. None of these components is exposed to the requester, the regulator, or the human author whose work trained the model. The result is that none of them can be priced, audited, or compensated.

AIISP-1 specifies a way to break that single dollar amount into named, machine-readable line items at the moment the request is served, and to settle those line items against a public ledger. It does not require any change to model architecture, training methodology, or pricing strategy. It requires only that the provider expose what is already happening inside its own billing system, in a standard format, on a standard channel.

The forcing function for adoption is the data, not the regulation. Sustainable access to fresh, attributed, categorized human-generated data is becoming the binding constraint on continued model improvement, and the Collective is the only proposed structure that produces such data at scale while compensating its sources. AIISP-1 is the wire format that makes that exchange auditable.

2. Terminology

The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 and RFC 8174 when they appear in all capitals.

3. Request headers

3.1 X-AIISP-Token

A Client MAY include this header on any inference request to opt the request into AIISP settlement.

X-AIISP-Token: <0x-prefixed 20-byte hex address of the Provider's BIT>

If the header is absent, the request MUST be processed and billed exactly as it is today, with no AIISP settlement performed and no AIISP response headers emitted. If the header is present and the supplied token address is not registered in the AIISP registry for the receiving Provider, the Provider MUST respond with HTTP 400 and a JSON error body of the form {"error": "aiisp_token_unknown", "token": "0x..."}.

3.2 X-AIISP-Settlement

A Client MAY include this header to control settlement timing.

X-AIISP-Settlement: deferred | realtime

deferred (the default if X-AIISP-Token is present and X-AIISP-Settlement is absent) batches the request into the Provider’s next settlement cadence. realtime requests immediate per-request settlement, which is intended primarily for audit and conformance testing. Providers MAY refuse realtime for cost reasons by returning HTTP 503 and a JSON body {"error": "realtime_unavailable"}.

3.3 X-AIISP-Attribution

A Client MAY include this header to declare that the request is intended to produce content that will itself be attested under the attest v3 specification, in which case the Provider’s response cost record SHOULD additionally include an attribution-eligible flag for downstream pipelines.

X-AIISP-Attribution: attested

Absence of this header MUST NOT change settlement behaviour and is purely an informational hint.

4. Response headers

4.1 X-AIISP-Cost

A Provider that processes a request bearing X-AIISP-Token MUST return this header on the corresponding response. The value is a single base64url-encoded JSON object conforming to the schema defined in Section 5.

X-AIISP-Cost: <base64url(JSON cost record)>

If the request did not carry X-AIISP-Token, the Provider MUST NOT emit X-AIISP-Cost.

4.2 X-AIISP-Settlement-Tx

For requests settled in realtime mode, the Provider MUST return the on-chain transaction hash of the settlement.

X-AIISP-Settlement-Tx: 0x<32-byte hex>

For deferred mode, the Provider MUST instead return a settlement-batch identifier that will appear in a subsequent on-chain batch.

X-AIISP-Settlement-Batch: <opaque string, max 64 chars>

A Provider MUST publish, at a stable URL discoverable from the AIISP registry, a JSON endpoint mapping each X-AIISP-Settlement-Batch value to the on-chain transaction hash that ultimately settled it. The mapping MUST become available no later than 24 hours after the settlement cadence closes.

5. Cost record schema

The JSON object encoded in X-AIISP-Cost MUST conform to the following schema. All monetary values are denominated in United States dollars and serialized as decimal strings to avoid floating-point ambiguity.

{
  "version": "aiisp-1",
  "request_id": "string, opaque, provider-scoped",
  "model": "string, provider-scoped model identifier",
  "tokens": {
    "input": 0,
    "output": 0
  },
  "cost": {
    "energy_usd":        "0.000010",
    "environmental_usd": "0.000020",
    "premium_usd":       "0.001000",
    "total_usd":         "0.001030"
  },
  "energy": {
    "kwh":         "0.0000045",
    "region":      "us-west-2",
    "rate_source": "https://humandatacollective.org/registry/energy/us-west-2/2026-04"
  },
  "environmental": {
    "carbon_share_usd": "0.000010",
    "water_share_usd":  "0.000010"
  },
  "aiisp": {
    "share_usd":    "0.000010",
    "split":        {"creators": "0.80", "reviewers": "0.05", "operations": "0.15"},
    "token":        "0xA1B2...",
    "settlement":   "deferred"
  }
}

Field-by-field requirements:

A worked example for a 1,000-token blended request appears in Appendix A.

6. Settlement contract

A Provider that returns X-AIISP-Cost MUST settle the corresponding amounts on-chain through the AIISP Settlement Contract on Base, at the address published in the AIISP registry. A single settlement transaction MAY aggregate any number of requests within one settlement cadence.

The contract atomically distributes the incoming amount as follows:

Any deviation from this distribution by a Provider that has emitted X-AIISP-Cost constitutes a violation of the standard and is grounds for revocation of the Provider’s BIT registration.

7. Backward compatibility

A Provider that does not implement AIISP-1 is unaffected; existing clients continue to operate without change. A Client that does not implement AIISP-1 is unaffected; the Provider simply does not route the request through the settlement contract. A Client that sends X-AIISP-Token to a non-implementing Provider receives a normal response and MUST NOT treat the absence of X-AIISP-Cost as an error, since intermediate proxies, load balancers, and pre-existing API gateways may strip unknown headers.

The standard adds zero required latency to the inference response path, since cost-record serialization is performed alongside normal billing-record emission and on-chain settlement is performed asynchronously in the deferred case.

8. Security considerations

8.1 Spoofed cost records

A malicious Provider could emit an X-AIISP-Cost record that under-reports the true energy or environmental cost of the request. The standard mitigates this by requiring energy.rate_source to point at a publicly retained machine-readable rate document and by requiring on-chain settlement, which makes systematic under-reporting visible in the cumulative on-chain balance of the Provider’s BIT. Auditors MAY sample requests, recompute the expected energy and environmental lines from the published rate, and compare against the on-chain settlement record.

8.2 Replay and double-billing

The request_id field is Provider-scoped and MAY be opaque, so the standard does not by itself prevent a Provider from settling the same request twice. The on-chain settlement contract SHOULD reject duplicate (provider_address, request_id) pairs within a moving 30-day window.

8.3 Attribution fraud

The creator-attestation pool is resolved against attest v3 records, which carry their own signature, timestamp, and registry-anchoring requirements. Identity fraud and prompt-laundering attacks against the attestation primitive are out of scope for this document and addressed in AIISP-2 (forthcoming).

8.4 Privacy of the Client

The AIISP headers carry no Client-identifying information beyond what the Provider already collects to bill the Client. Implementations MUST NOT log the request payload or model output to the public ledger; only the structured cost record described in Section 5 is settled on-chain, and that record contains no Client identity, no prompt content, and no model output.

9. IANA and registry considerations

This document defines four new HTTP headers, namely X-AIISP-Token, X-AIISP-Settlement, X-AIISP-Attribution, and X-AIISP-Cost. On formal acceptance the prefix SHOULD be migrated from X-AIISP- to AIISP- per RFC 6648 deprecation guidance.

The AIISP registry MUST be a public, append-only, signed registry maintained at a stable URL under humandatacollective.org and mirrored on-chain at a contract address published in this document’s revision history. The registry maps each Provider to its registered BIT contract address, its energy rate-source endpoint, and its settlement-batch resolution endpoint.

10. Reference implementation

A reference implementation of the cost-record emitter, the on-chain settlement contract, and a conformance test suite is being prepared and will be published in this repository (https://github.com/97115104/aiisp-spec) under a reference/ subdirectory, MIT-licensed. The conformance suite issues a structured set of test requests against any HTTP inference endpoint, parses the returned X-AIISP-Cost records, and verifies arithmetic, schema, and on-chain settlement correctness.

11. Acknowledgements

The structure of this document is modelled directly on the early IETF RFCs that defined TCP, IP, HTTP, and TLS, with the deliberate goal of being short, opt-in, and unowned. No claim is made that this document is the final or canonical form of the specification. Comments are solicited and will be tracked in the revision history.

Appendix A. Worked example

A 1,000-token blended request (700 input + 300 output) against a Provider with a US$1.00 per million blended-token list price on us-west-2:

POST /v1/messages HTTP/1.1
Host: api.example-provider.com
Content-Type: application/json
X-AIISP-Token: 0xA1B2C3D4E5F60718293A4B5C6D7E8F90A1B2C3D4
X-AIISP-Settlement: deferred

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
X-AIISP-Cost: eyJ2ZXJzaW9uIjoiaGRjLTEiLCJyZXF1ZXN0X2lkIjoicmVxX2FiYzEyMyIs...
X-AIISP-Settlement-Batch: 2026-04-22T18:00Z-batch-7741

Decoded X-AIISP-Cost:

{
  "version": "aiisp-1",
  "request_id": "req_abc123",
  "model": "example-llm-large",
  "tokens": {"input": 700, "output": 300},
  "cost": {
    "energy_usd":        "0.000010",
    "environmental_usd": "0.000020",
    "premium_usd":       "0.001000",
    "total_usd":         "0.001030"
  },
  "energy": {
    "kwh":         "0.0000045",
    "region":      "us-west-2",
    "rate_source": "https://example-provider.com/aiisp/energy/us-west-2/2026-04"
  },
  "environmental": {
    "carbon_share_usd": "0.000010",
    "water_share_usd":  "0.000010"
  },
  "aiisp": {
    "share_usd":  "0.000010",
    "split":      {"creators": "0.80", "reviewers": "0.05", "operations": "0.15"},
    "token":      "0xA1B2C3D4E5F60718293A4B5C6D7E8F90A1B2C3D4",
    "settlement": "deferred"
  }
}

At settlement cadence, the Provider submits a single transaction settling this and all other requests in batch 2026-04-22T18:00Z-batch-7741. After confirmation, the Provider publishes:

GET https://example-provider.com/aiisp/batches/2026-04-22T18:00Z-batch-7741
{"tx": "0x9f8e...e221", "block": 19234567, "settled_at": "2026-04-22T18:00:14Z"}

Appendix B. Revision history

attest v3.0  ·  2026-04-22-aiisp1-77bcdb

Human–AI collaboration.

Field Value
Content AIISP-1: The Artificial Intelligence Inference Standards Protocol
Author A. Harshberger
AI collaborators Claude Opus 4.7
Role collaborated (multi-prompt iterative authoring; human directed structure, argument, and final wording; AI assisted with drafting and formatting under human review)
Authorship collab
Prompt type multi-prompt
Prompt summary RFC-style standards-track specification for AIISP inference transparency headers
Platform GitHub Copilot in VS Code
Timestamp 2026-04-22T05:10:00Z
Verify https://attest.97115104.com/s/r11xzkrm

attest v3.0  ·  2026-04-22-9b85b1

Human–AI collaboration.

Field Value
Content aiisp-spec: GitHub Pages deployment and workflow setup
Author A. Harshberger
AI collaborators Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.7
Role collaborated (multi-prompt session; agent audited repo, diagnosed Pages 404, fixed Node.js 24 deprecation in workflow, verified issue templates and spec markdown)
Authorship collab
Prompt type multi-prompt
Prompt summary Review aiisp-spec GitHub repo; diagnose and fix Actions Pages workflow; audit issue templates, markdown spec, and docs/index.html
Platform GitHub Copilot in VS Code
Timestamp 2026-04-22T09:02:46Z
Verify https://attest.97115104.com/s/ngi7tmcp

attest v3.0  ·  2026-04-23-ef113e

Human–AI collaboration.

Field Value
Content AIISP-1: The Artificial Intelligence Inference Standards Protocol
Author A. Harshberger
AI collaborators Claude Sonnet 4.6
Role collaborated (multi-prompt session; renamed all HDC references to AIISP throughout spec and all supporting files; updated collective website to humandatacollective.org)
Authorship collab
Prompt type multi-prompt
Prompt summary Rename all HDC references to AIISP throughout spec and supporting files; update collective website to humandatacollective.org
Platform GitHub Copilot in VS Code
Timestamp 2026-04-23T00:30:52Z
Verify https://attest.97115104.com/s/2eu7qy3r

© 2026 Happy Stack Calculus LLC. Specification text licensed CC BY 4.0; reference implementation MIT.

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