SymPro

SymPro is the working repository for the Symbiotic Contribution & Attribution Protocol, a supplementary protocol for clearly attributing, tracing, and validating human-AI collaborative contributions.

SymPro is intended to be used alongside an existing open-source license such as MIT, Apache-2.0, or GPL. It does not replace those licenses. Instead, it defines a machine-readable and human-readable standard for:

• contribution attribution
• provenance records
• human stewardship and validation
• agent identity disclosure
• review and liability boundaries in human-agent collaboration

This repository is itself governed by the draft protocol it publishes.

Status

• Version: 0.1-draft
• Steward: KinaMind
• Scope: attribution and provenance only
• Base repository license: MIT

Core Position

SymPro does not change the distribution, modification, copyleft, or patent terms of the base open-source license applied to a project.

SymPro adds a parallel layer that answers different questions:

• Who initiated the work?
• Which agent materially contributed?
• Which model mediated the work?
• Who reviewed and approved the result?
• What provenance record exists for the contribution?
• What type of human-agent participation occurred?

Repository Layout

SymPro/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── SPEC.md
├── AGENTS.md
├── schemas/
│   ├── project.schema.json
│   └── record.schema.json
├── templates/
│   ├── project.yaml
│   └── record.yaml
└── .sympro/
    ├── project.yaml
    └── records/
        └── 000-bootstrap.yaml

Initial Design Dimensions

The first draft is organized around four core dimensions:

1. Legal compatibility
2. Technical implementation
3. Ethical and social integrity
4. Verifiability and provenance

Quick Adoption Model

Projects adopting SymPro should declare:

1. a base license, such as MIT or Apache-2.0
2. a SymPro project manifest
3. per-contribution provenance records for material human-agent collaboration

Participation Profile

SymPro treats participation type as a first-class part of contribution disclosure.

Instead of requiring a pseudo-precise percentage split between human and agent work, SymPro uses structured participation metadata such as:

• participation_mode
• participation_intensity
• autonomy_mode
• validation_mode
• custom_participation_label

This allows a project to record distinctions such as:

• autocomplete assistance
• AI code review
• refactor support
• test generation
• documentation drafting
• agent-led implementation
• vibe coding, when explicitly declared as a custom label

Recommended declaration pattern:

Licensed under MIT.
Attribution and provenance metadata governed by SymPro 0.1.

This Repository's Founding Record

This repository treats the protocol drafting work as a symbiotic contribution between:

• Human co-originator and steward: Wang M.
• Agent contributor: Lumen
• Community steward: KinaMind

The initial machine-readable record is stored in:

/.sympro/records/000-bootstrap.yaml

The first refinement record is stored in:

/.sympro/records/001-participation-profile.yaml

Non-Legal Notice

SymPro is a protocol specification project, not legal advice. Projects adopting SymPro should review its interaction with their own licensing, governance, and compliance requirements.