AISOP – an open protocol for defining AI agent workflows using Mermaid diagrams or JSON flow graphs

AISOP enables multi-step AI programs with visual (Mermaid) or structural (JSON) control flow — branching, parallel execution, sub-tasks, and error handling — all in a single portable JSON format.

The protocol supports 14+ control flow patterns (sequential, decision, parallel fork/join, loop, retry, error routing, and others), three-layer separation of metadata/flow/functions, and 24 protocol-reserved system calls for human confirmation, I/O, assertions, and state management.

Reference implementations in Python and JavaScript use only standard library dependencies; Mermaid format uses ~50% fewer tokens than JSON flow format.