CLASP
Clause-Level Access and Standards Protocol. An open specification that extends the IAB Tech Lab’s Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP) for the specific domain of engineering and technical standards.
CLASP is part of the Sèvres umbrella project; the spec is licensed CC-BY-4.0. The reference platform is Norma, a turnkey CLASP-conformant gateway for Standards Developing Organizations.
What CLASP solves
Engineering Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) have responded to agentic AI by either prohibiting AI ingestion of their standards outright or restricting it through license terms. This is self-defeating: practicing engineers increasingly work alongside agentic tooling and need to consult standards inside that workflow.
CLASP demonstrates that an SDO can preserve its subscription revenue and IP protection while making content accessible to licensed AI agents. The architecture is strictly additive to existing SDO infrastructure: existing subscription platforms continue to serve human users; new CLASP and CoMP endpoints serve licensed AI agents. The revenue model is unchanged; only the access mode is expanded.
How it fits together
CLASP sits on top of CoMP. CoMP defines the handshake by which an AI System and a Content Owner agree on commercial terms; CLASP populates CoMP’s ext placeholders with engineering-specific intent, scope, and retrieval metadata. The retrieval layer is an MCP server exposing six standards-specific tools: get_clause, search, resolve_term, list_changes, resolve_reference, and compliance_check. Every response is accompanied by a structured citation envelope that downstream deliverables MUST carry.
Read the spec
- Current working draft — the CLASP-0.1 draft.
- Worked examples — full request/response exchanges for the principal scenarios.
- JSON schemas — wire shapes for the extension objects, catalog documents, and citation envelope.
See the platform
Norma is a turnkey CLASP-conformant gateway for Standards Developing Organizations: a single Next.js application that hosts four fictional publishers concurrently, each with a complete CoMP front-door, MCP retrieval layer, discoverability catalog, and revocation list. Available as a self-hosted platform or a managed service.