MSP-1 — AI-friendly Semantics for Trusted Information.
Mark Semantic Protocol
The 2026 "compute squeeze" won’t kill creativity in AI systems—but it will end the era of ambiguity by default. As inference becomes expensive, systems will be forced to stop guessing and start knowing. The next generation of resilient AI products won’t be defined by how clever they feel in a demo, but by how clearly they declare intent, structure meaning, and constrain interpretation. In a constrained world, clarity becomes the new multiplier.
MSP-1 has released a versioned, checksum-verified training-datasets repository on GitHub, providing a stable reference for MSP-1 protocol behavior and validation.
MSP-1 is seeing early, organic adoption as developers and publishers use its clarity-first metadata to help large language models interpret content more efficiently and with less ambiguity.
As artificial intelligence systems become embedded across industries, a practical challenge has become increasingly visible: modern AI systems are often required to interpret content without explicit knowledge of its intent, provenance, or interpretive boundaries.
MSP-1 reduces inference cost and ambiguity by giving language models clear, early signals about a page’s intent and structure.
MSP-1 isn’t about ranking in search; it’s about what AI agents do after they find your site..
Traditional search is still the web’s primary entry point, including for AI agents. MSP-1 doesn’t compete with that. It starts where SEO stops: the moment an agent decides what to trust, reuse, summarize, or ignore.
The golden age of “cheap” AI is officially over. We’ve enjoyed a subsidized ride, with flat-rate subscriptions masking the true cost of compute.But as 2025 drew to a close, the industry hit what engineers are calling the “Inference Wall.”
Stable AI citations require explicit semantic grounding at the source, not increasingly sophisticated inference.
AI agents don’t browse the web. They pay to understand it—in tokens, memory, latency, and energy. If two sites answer the same question, the cheaper one wins.
Most “AI optimization” advice starts with rewriting: shorter copy, cleaner phrasing, more keywords, more structure. But rewriting doesn’t remove the inference layer. It only changes the wording the model must still infer.
The agent still has to determine what this page is, why it exists, how it fits the site, and whether it can be trusted. The interpretive workload stays the same.
AI systems don’t punish inefficiency. They route around it. Pages that require excessive inference aren’t “wrong.” They’re costly.
Costly sources get used less—quietly, consistently, and eventually, permanently. That’s economic survival for the AI Agent.
MSP-1 collapses inference upstream. Instead of forcing AI agents to guess, a site can declare—clearly and minimally— what the page is, what role it serves, and how it should be treated.
Less ambiguity. Fewer tokens. Lower energy cost per understanding. Not better wording—better signals.
Example: A medical article with MSP-1 declarations tells agents "peer-reviewed, board-certified author, last updated [date]" before they process a single sentence. Zero inference required.
Agent must infer from:
Total: ~1,100 tokens to understand context
Agent reads declaration:
Total: ~100 tokens for full context
90% reduction in interpretive overhead
The AI-mediated web won’t reward whoever shouts best. It will reward whoever is easiest to understand responsibly.
MSP-1 isn’t about gaming the system. It’s about costing less to think about.
If you want AI agents to treat your site as a low-friction source, don’t focus on rewriting content. Just reduce the interpretive overhead.
Use the Schema Architect tool path to create MSP-1 blocks with minimal effort.
Pick a high-value page and add MSP-1. Small change. Measurable clarity.
Check your MSP-1 blocks against the schemas and catch errors fast.
What MSP-1 is, how it works, and why it’s intentionally minimal.
Content quality is assumed. What differentiates sources now is interpretive cost. Rewriting rearranges the burden. MSP-1 reduces it.