PIC Specification
The PIC Specification defines the generic, implementation-independent rules and invariants that underlie every PIC-compliant protocol. It is not a protocol itself: it states what every conforming system must guarantee, leaving wire formats, transports, cryptographic suites, and deployment choices to the protocols built on top of it.
Since version 0.2 the specification is published as a document set: an entry point whose Documents table indexes every subordinate specification, plus shared
Legal Appendicesincorporated by reference into every document.
These specifications are open, actively developed public drafts. They are independently developed and are not standards, so they carry no IETF, RFC, ISO, W3C, or other standards-body status — the RFC-style rendering is simply a familiar, readable format, and details may still change between versions. As with an open-source license, they are published under CC BY 4.0 and provided "as is", without warranties or conditions of any kind; implementers and users assume all risks of their use. For the complete picture, see the status and legal notice below.
Current specification (0.2 draft)
The current profile identifier is https://pic-protocol.org/profiles/0.2. It redirects to the rendered PIC 0.2 specification entry point.
Each document is available as rendered HTML, plain text, and RFC XML; the Source column links to the authoritative Markdown.
Releases
| Version | Status | Description | Reference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.2 | Draft - current | Specification set: entry point with Documents table, Prover and Verifier, Revocation, Sandboxed Execution, Architecture and Deployment, and shared Legal Appendices. | pic-spec 0.2 |
| 0.1 | Draft - superseded | Initial generic specification draft (single document). | pic-spec 0.1 |
All releases are drafts: expect clarifications, additional normative text, and structural adjustments driven by community feedback and implementation experience from emerging PIC-compliant protocols.
Status and legal notice
Every PIC document published here is an independently developed draft, not a standard.
- It has not been adopted, endorsed, approved, or published by the IETF, IRTF, IAB, RFC Editor, ISO, IEC, W3C, CNCF, OpenID Foundation, or any other standards-development organization.
- It is not an RFC, an Internet Standard, or an official work item of any working group or standards body. The RFC-style HTML / text / XML rendering is a formatting choice only and implies no such status.
- It is published solely for public review, research, experimentation, and implementation feedback, and may be revised, replaced, or withdrawn at any time.
- Publication does not constitute certification, endorsement, security approval, interoperability assurance, or regulatory recognition.
- Implementers use these drafts entirely at their own risk. Any implementation, interoperability statement, or conformance claim applies only to the exact document version referenced.
PIC documents are published and maintained by Nitro Agility S.r.l. as Specification Steward. The full legal terms — disclaimer, limitation of liability, licensing, and attribution — are in the Legal Appendices.