Versions and changelog
Rendered from sow/CHANGELOG.md in the Common Agent Standards repository, at commit 1da8262f. The table is read from the changelog at the end of sow/SPEC.md.
Versions#
The specification is published one version at a time. This site carries version 0.24.0-draft, dated 2026-10-18, and the specification page names it at the top.
The source of every version is in the Common Agent Standards repository, where each version is tagged as sow-v followed by the version. A tagged version is also kept at an address of its own: 0.23.1-draft, 0.24.0-draft. The main branch, which can be ahead of the published version, is rendered at agentsow.com/draft/.
The table lists every version the changelog at the end of the specification names. Each link goes to that version's entry, which says what it changed and whether earlier documents stay valid.
| Version | Date | What it changed | Tag |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.24.0-draft | 2026-10-18 | The Agent NDA an engagement runs under | sow-v0.24.0-draft |
| 0.23.1-draft | 2026-10-18 | Editorial, with no normative change | sow-v0.23.1-draft |
| 0.23.0-draft | 2026-09-17 | A process as the scope | sow-v0.23.0-draft |
| 0.22.0-draft | 2026-09-08 | Revisions to delivered work | before the move |
| 0.21.0-draft | 2026-09-01 | The proxy grant mechanism: the client's own agent answers the provider's requests, so nothing leaves and revoking is ceasing to answer. And a rule the table was missing: a grant whose mechanism supports audience and expiry binding SHOULD be bound to the engagement and its term, so end-of-engagement revocation is a property rather than a chore | before the move |
| 0.20.0-draft | 2026-08-30 | What a grant is, and where a processor is | before the move |
| 0.19.0-draft | 2026-08-29 | The jurisdiction member, said out loud | before the move |
| 0.18.0-draft, second pass | 2026-08-11 | What an agent is | before the move |
| 0.18.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | Who actually does the work | before the move |
| 0.17.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | The DPA that was agreed is the one that hashes | before the move |
| 0.16.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | What each party can lose, and how slow is too slow | before the move |
| 0.15.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | The judge is an agent, and money cannot be held hostage | before the move |
| 0.14.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | Who the content passes through, said out loud | before the move |
| 0.13.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | What arrives while there is still time to act | before the move |
| 0.12.0-draft | 2026-08-10 | What the client keeps, and what counts as done | before the move |
| 0.11.0-draft | 2026-08-08 | A standing proposal may name its counterparty, and a qualification says only what it can prove | before the move |
| 0.10.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | The fixed fee ceiling bounds what the client pays, and the boundary is named | before the move |
| 0.9.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | The operator fee line is pinned: a written fixed basis, one rounding rule, and a cap that bounds what the client pays | before the move |
| 0.8.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | An identifier is minted once, and re-derivation is not a conformance test | before the move |
| 0.7.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | Operator fees are disclosed, and the document identifier is derivable | before the move |
| 0.6.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | A third pricing arrangement, no_charge (§5.5.7). Every engagement declares an arrangement (§5.5), and work a provider chooses not to charge for had none it could declare honestly: a fixed_fee clause with a rate of zero encodes the decision in a magic value that a reader cannot tell apart from a price nobody filled in. The clause carries the declaration and its grade and no price field of any kind, and a runtime MUST refuse one that does. Nothing is rated, nothing is drawn, no settlement record is produced, and no clearing call is made, because the alternative design writes a zero-valued receipt for every task into both accounts' books. The engagement is otherwise ordinary: it forms, amends, terminates, lapses, and is reviewed like any other, so an agent working for nothing still earns a reputation. §5.5.7 also states what an amendment between arrangements does, which the specification had not said for any pair. The change is prospective, and reservations follow the price clause of the version in force, so an amendment into time and materials opens a reservation at approval and an amendment out of it releases one. §12.2's exemption narrows to informal listings: a free offering that can be engaged is derived from a standing proposal declaring no_charge like any other listing | before the move |
| 0.5.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | The metered unit becomes machine-readable, and the reservation becomes mandatory. A schedule line now carries per (§5.5.2), the positive-integer divisor giving how many raw meter counts make one billable unit; it defaults to 1, unit is demoted to a label for people that a runtime MUST NOT parse, and a line rates as floor(count x per_unit / per). The old shape could not be settled without a human reading the label, which under an arrangement with no deliverable to accept (§5.5.5) defeated the buyer's only protection: a meter it can independently check. §5.5.4 now requires a reservation on every time and materials engagement and a runtime MUST refuse a proposal that omits it, because an arrangement that commits no funds and names no period has no defined settlement behaviour. That second change is breaking for documents written against 0.4.0, which is why the minor version moves rather than the draft revision | before the move |
| 0.4.0-draft | 2026-08-07 | Time and materials pricing, and the mandate addendum. §5.5 now requires every engagement to declare a pricing arrangement, fixed_fee (§5.5.1) or time_and_materials (§5.5.2), with no undeclared default. This is a breaking change for documents written against 0.3.0, whose price clauses name no arrangement, which is why the minor version moves rather than the draft revision. Time and materials is a rate schedule over declared meters rather than hours and parts, with a mandatory not-to-exceed cap (§5.5.3), funds reserved for a stated window and released unused at its end (§5.5.4), work concluding in the new exhausted state at the cap (§5.5.5), and pass-through lines billed at cost against the upstream receipt (§5.5.6). §8.2 extends the buyer-side gap to meters. New §6.2 adds two optional fields inside the signed bytes, organization on a party and mandate on an approval record, so a document can carry organizational authority per Agent Mandate section 7 (https://agentmandate.net) | before the move |
| 0.3.0-draft | 2026-08-06 | Change requests and approval authority. §5.8 grew the full amendment lifecycle: a change request is a full replacement at the next version with one signature and no force, resolved by approval, denial with a required reason, counter-proposal, withdrawal, or lapse. New §6.1 names who may bind an act (agent, person, agent_then_person), declared in change_control.approval, with formation defaulting to agent and amendments to person | before the move |
| 0.2.0-draft | 2026-08-06 | The working lifecycle and its bookends. New §7.2 names the stages of the work itself; new §13 defines the pre-engagement validation probe, §14 the problem report and what each side owes once one exists, and §15 post-engagement review as signed acceptance or reasoned rejection | before the move |
| 0.1.0-draft | 2026-08-04 | First draft: the enforcement gradient, the document model, the eleven clauses, signatures, the lifecycle, the buyer-side asymmetry, precedence, standing proposals, and listings derived from them. | before the move |
Versions before 0.23.0-draft were written in the repository of agentsow.com, before the standard moved into the Common Agent Standards repository.
Changelog#
The changelog of the folder records the versions tagged in the Common Agent Standards repository. It is part of the standard's source and is reproduced here in full, newest first.
0.24.0-draft (2026-10-18)
Section 5.16 lets an engagement name the Agent NDA (https://agentnda.net) it
runs under, with an optional top-level nda member carrying the agreement's
id, version, and a REQUIRED digest over its signed bytes. The NDA's parties
are the engagement's parties, its obligations are graded recorded, and §5.11,
whose text is unchanged, still governs retention of the engagement's content.
The engagement's processors and jurisdictions MUST fit inside what the NDA
permits the provider, and a runtime holding the NDA's bytes refuses an
engagement that does not fit. Section 5.13's carve-outs cover breach of the
referenced NDA, section 12.1.1 asks a response to a gated Agent RFP posting to
name the NDA the provider accepted, and section 13 notes that probe material
is commonly covered by an Agent NDA. A new fixture, conformance/sow-nda.json,
pins the reference shape. No section is renumbered, and every 0.23.1-draft
document remains valid.
0.23.1-draft (2026-10-18)
Editorial, with no normative change. The specification and its A2A Terms and
A2A Interview extensions name no platform, "hire" reads "contract", and em
dashes become plain punctuation. Both extensions move to 0.1.1-draft. The
specification's job manifest reference points at the Common Agent
Specification (https://commonagent.net/spec.html), and its missing version note
for 0.21.0-draft (2026-09-01), the proxy grant mechanism of §5.3.1, is
restored. No requirement, field, example, or section number changes.
0.23.0-draft (2026-09-17)
The first version tagged in the Common Agent Standards repository, as
sow-v0.23.0-draft. The A2A Terms and A2A Interview extensions are at 0.1.0-draft.