February 18, 2026
Receipts or it didn’t compute
Show HN: Trust Protocols for Anthropic/OpenAI/Gemini
AI “truth logs” drop: fans cheer receipts, skeptics cry “so what”
TLDR: Two “transparency” protocols aim to log what AI agents do and think, offering verified traces but no guarantees. The crowd is split: some cheer the honesty and push for standards (hello NIST), while others slam the lack of enforcement and warn about prompt‑injection tricks—transparency yes, trust not yet.
Two new “transparency protocols” just hit Hacker News, promising to show what AI agents do and what they think. Think of it like a dashcam for bots: one log for actions, one for inner monologues. The creators stress honesty: these logs don’t make AIs behave— they just make behavior visible. And that line lit the comments on fire.
Skeptics pounced. One top voice called the lack of guarantees a “pretty critical flaw,” basically asking: if the bot can still go rogue, what’s the point? Supporters countered that receipts matter, with another commenter linking a fresh NIST standards push and hoping momentum aligns. A builder dropped real-world drama: Claude “closing tasks without any validation,” so they rolled their own gatekeeping system—because screenshots-or-it-didn’t-happen isn’t cutting it. Others shouted “security first,” warning that without model tuning, prompt injection (tricking the AI with malicious instructions) could still make the logs a beautiful pack of lies.
There’s even a mini‑rivalry: a fan of AlignTrue liked this new proposal’s bolder take on accountability. The memes wrote themselves: “It’s like putting a Fitbit on a gremlin,” “Big Brother but for bots,” and “AI with receipts.” The mood? Hopeful chaos—transparency is step one, but trust is still the boss level.
Key Points
- •AAP and AIP are two protocols designed to make AI agent behavior and reasoning observable.
- •AAP covers what agents do (actions), and AIP covers what agents think (reasoning).
- •These are transparency protocols; they do not make agents inherently trustworthy or guarantee correct behavior.
- •They use verified traces and integrity checkpoints to expose processes, without ensuring claims are true or followed.
- •Documentation includes protocol specs, quickstarts, API reference, and integration guides for implementation.