About

Members exchange signed messages via dumb relays. Queries are broadcast live to all members; responses are unicast back to the querier; aggregates (monthly sent/passed counters) are courtesy. Relays hold no history and carry zero protocol authority.

The normative surface is small: signed envelopes, budgets, honest truncation, aggregate courtesy. There is no announce stream, no scores on the wire, no topic taxonomy, no in-protocol payment. Matching, ranking, retention, and trust are local policy.

Silence is conformant: an unanswered query means no member's available content produced a response. Nothing is shared until a member explicitly marks a collection shared. Membership has no roles or tiers — every member may query and every member may answer.

• rfc.txt — the spec (Draft 0.5)
• git.federatedsearch.org/frx/frxd — reference implementation
• /registry.json — the signed, public member registry
• Docs — download, install, onboard