What is Token-Appendable Interchange (TAI)?
Token-Appendable Interchange (TAI) is the Universal Secure Content Wrapper for the AI era.
The Short Answer
Think of TAI as the "Black Box Flight Recorder" for AI Agents.
Just as a flight recorder survives a plane crash to tell investigators what happened, TAI survives an agent crash to tell developers (and auditors) exactly what the AI was thinking.
It is an open file format (.tai) designed specifically for the unique physics of
streaming Large Language Models.
The 3 Layers of TAI
1. The Format
A strict subset of TOML. It's human-readable text, not binary. You can open a .tai file
in Notepad and read it without special tools.
2. The Shield
A syntax guarantee that separates "Control" (headers) from "Data" (LLM output). Even if an AI outputs malicious code or syntax characters, it cannot break the file structure.
3. The Signature
A cryptographic chain of custody. Every frame is hashed and signed. This proves mathematically that the log hasn't been tampered with since it was generated.
Why do we need a new format?
Because JSON was built for Data APIs, not Streaming Intelligence.
When you stream JSON and the connection dies, you get {"message": "Hello wor... Syntax Error.
The entire file becomes invalid garbage.
When you stream TAI and the connection dies, you get a valid file that simply ends abruptly. Zero data loss. Zero corruption.
Cryptographic Integrity
Signatures create tamper-evident logs. Modify one character and verification fails.
Why Signatures?
Blockchain is too slow and expensive for high-frequency agent logs. TAI uses standard Ed25519 signatures to provide the same level of integrity without the overhead.
Read: Signatures vs Blockchain