Frequently asked questions
Direct answers about Blue, agents, MyOS, Timelines, providers, Mandates, Agreements, PayNotes, blockchains, licensing, and implementation sources.
What is Blue in one sentence?#
Blue is an open technology for representing connected business and everyday activities as exact typed documents that can change deterministically under provider-backed actions and explicit authority.
Why call it a coordination layer for agents?#
Agents can already reason and use tools. Cross-organizational work additionally requires shared state, commitments, attribution, authority, external facts, conditional payment, and explainable consequences. Blue makes those structures explicit and reusable instead of forcing every agent to infer a different private application model.
Is Blue an agent protocol?#
It can support agent-to-agent and agent-to-provider work, but it is not limited to agents. The same documents coordinate people, businesses, services, banks, public institutions, devices, and portals.
Is Blue a blockchain or smart-contract platform?#
No. Blue Contracts define deterministic state transitions, which is one useful similarity to smart contracts. Ordinary Blue coordination does not require a global ledger. A blockchain can provide a Timeline where public finality is valuable.
Is Blue just YAML or JSON?#
No. YAML is an authoring syntax over a restricted JSON-model representation. Blue adds typed graph semantics, references, overlays, schemas, resolution, canonical identity, BlueId, and optional contract content.
What is the difference between Blue and MyOS?#
Blue is the open technology and semantic substrate. MyOS is one product and operating environment built on it. MyOS can render documents, capture actions, run sessions, provide Timelines, coordinate providers, and operate Mandates. Other portals and operators can participate too.
What is the difference between Playground and MyOS?#
Playground is the proof and teaching environment. It exposes documents, operations, Timeline Entries, authority decisions, processing traces, and resulting states. MyOS is a practical user and business product experience.
Why are Timelines separate from the processor?#
The processor must remain deterministic and replayable. It should not poll providers, read the wall clock, authenticate users, search for Mandates, or decide which external event arrived first. The feeder closes the external world, then gives the processor one original eligible event.
Can one document use several providers?#
Yes. Different Timeline Channels can point to Timelines maintained by MyOS, a bank, government institution, KYA provider, blockchain adapter, or specialist service. Provider choice follows the claim required by the role.
Why are Mandates documents rather than tokens or permission rows?#
A living Mandate can carry exact participants, target scope, request restrictions, confirmation, activation, revocation, embedded conditions, and historical state at the action time. Counterparties can inspect the authority model instead of trusting one application's hidden boolean.
Does a Mandate make an agent look like the human?#
No. The Timeline Entry remains attributed to the agent. Mandate Authority explains whose document role the agent is allowed to exercise and under what constraints.
Does a PayNote move money?#
No. PayNote governs and records one payment process. A bank, card processor, wallet, financing provider, or other rail actor performs or authoritatively reports the money movement through attributed Responses.
Can an existing legal agreement become a Blue Agreement?#
The design approach preserves the complete text, structures its clauses, maps parties and exact content links, and adds processes only where operational meaning is clear. Unmapped or judgment-heavy clauses remain visible as text. The Agreement package described here is design-stage unless an exact released package says otherwise.
Does every clause need to become executable?#
No. That would be dangerous and unnecessarily complex. Complete terms should remain represented; only clear operational clauses should map to reusable or explicit decision processes.
Where are canonical types and BlueIds?#
Use repo.blue for package and type content. Use the specification and implementation repositories for normative behavior, fixtures, APIs, and releases.
Is Blue open source?#
The technology and public implementations are presented as MIT-licensed. Exact licensing for a particular repository or artifact should always be verified in that repository's current license file.
What should I read first?#
Read Blue in five minutes or choose a solution. Then use the Playground before opening package and implementation detail.