About the protocol
We built this because we needed it.
Rhumb Workflow Protocol™ started as a survival mechanism inside a real product team struggling with AI-assisted development. It became an open standard because the problem it solved turned out to be universal.
Origin
It started with a crypto wallet.
YAKKL began as a browser extension wallet for digital assets: a secure, multi-chain crypto wallet with tiered security (Explorer™, Guardian™, Sovereignty™) and supporting products like Vault, Marks, Swaps, and Sentinel. Building it meant coordinating across 110+ packages, multiple languages, smart contracts, and cloud infrastructure.
AI coding assistants arrived and immediately became essential. But the more we depended on them, the more a pattern emerged: sessions drifted, context evaporated between conversations, hallucinations compounded, and the same mistakes recurred across sessions. Work that felt productive in the moment left a fragile trail.
The problem
Rules that weren't enforced were just suggestions.
The first response was to write rules: coding guidelines, architecture constraints, naming conventions, security policies. The rules were good. The problem was that no AI tool reliably followed them. A rule file sitting in the repository didn't change behavior unless something checked compliance mechanically.
We needed more than instructions. We needed a plan format that AI tools could read, a state file that tracked progress across sessions, handoffs that preserved context when the work crossed a boundary, and audits that verified compliance rather than trusting it.
The protocol
Plans, state, handoffs, and audits as plain files.
The format that emerged was deliberately simple: Markdown for plans and handoffs, YAML for state and metadata, JSON Schema for validation. No runtime dependency, no proprietary format, no vendor lock-in. Any tool that can read a file can participate in the workflow.
The critical insight was audit-based conformance. Instead of hoping AI tools follow the rules, the protocol builds verification into the workflow itself. Every third phase triggers an audit. Handoffs preserve context mechanically. State files make recovery explicit. The protocol doesn't trust; it checks.
That format became Rhumb Workflow Protocol™. The name comes from navigation: a rhumb line is a course of constant bearing, and a meridian is a line of longitude. Together they locate any point on the sphere. In the same way, the protocol (Rhumb) and the implementation (Meridian) together locate any point in a workflow.
Protocol and product
Rhumb is the standard. Meridian is one implementation.
We separated the protocol from the product deliberately. Rhumb Workflow Protocol™ is Apache-2.0, vendor-neutral, and designed for third-party implementation. It defines the artifact model, lifecycle semantics, validation behavior, and conformance levels. It does not require any particular tool, runtime, or vendor.
YAKKL® Meridian™ is the reference implementation: a 16-package platform (TypeScript and Rust) that uses Rhumb artifacts in a real product with a CLI, desktop app, agent loop, and governance system. Meridian proves the protocol works in production but does not own it.
Any team, tool, or platform can implement Rhumb. The adapters already exist for Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI, ChatGPT, and Claude.ai. The protocol travels with the work, not with the tool.