omcp

omcp is an open protocol specification for connecting AI models to tools and data, developed and maintained by Enclawed, Inc. It is a community-driven hard fork of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), created to keep the protocol an open, permissionless standard governed transparently on GitHub. The specification is generated automatically from source on every commit and published as both HTML and PDF at the project's GitHub Pages site.

What It Is

omcp is a protocol specification — not a runtime library or SaaS product — that defines how AI models communicate with external tools and data sources. It occupies the same category as the Model Context Protocol it forked from, providing the wire protocol, schema field names, method names, and protocol version identifiers that clients, servers, and SDKs use to interoperate. The schema is defined first in TypeScript and also published as JSON Schema for broader compatibility.

Governance Philosophy

The central motivation for the fork is governance, not technical divergence. The README states the project exists to keep the protocol "an open, permissionless standard: developed asynchronously, reviewed transparently on GitHub, and decided on technical merit rather than on closed-door approval." Contributions are evaluated on five criteria: good coding practices, solving a real and unaddressed problem, a clear problem statement, working unit tests with verifiable data, and a reference documentation chapter. There is no sponsor to find, no working group to join, and no approval to request.

Drop-in Compatibility

omcp is explicitly designed to be drop-in compatible with the broader MCP ecosystem. According to the project README, the wire protocol, schema field names, method names, and protocol version identifiers are unchanged from the upstream MCP specification, meaning existing clients, servers, and SDKs interoperate without modification. The fork is in governance and development process, not in what goes over the wire.

Specification Versioning and Proposals

The project maintains a versioned specification table with clearly labeled statuses. As of the latest build, the current stable version is dated 2026-07-28, with a draft version also available. Earlier versions (2025-11-25, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05) are marked superseded but remain accessible. Design decisions are tracked as SEPs (Specification Enhancement Proposals), with 74 proposals rendered from the seps/ directory. Each proposal corresponds to a pull request, creating a transparent design record.

Update: Version 2026-07-28 (Latest)

The current stable specification is version 2026-07-28, built from commit f6d5b3f on 2026-09-26. The site is rebuilt automatically from docs/specification, schema/, and seps/ on every change to main. A draft version is also published continuously. The project was created in September 2026 and has been actively updated, with the last push recorded on 2026-09-26. The specification and code are licensed under Apache-2.0; documentation (excluding specifications) is under CC-BY-4.0.

Lineage and Attribution

omcp forked from the Model Context Protocol, which was originally created by David Soria Parra and Justin Spahr-Summers. The project explicitly states it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the MCP project, Anthropic, PBC, or LF Projects, LLC. The omcp name and logo are trademarks of Enclawed, Inc., while the specification itself is open under Apache-2.0.