MSP-1 - AI-friendly semantics for trusted information.

Enterprise & Development Network

MSP-1 Brand Provenance Extension

Status: Concept
Ecosystem: MSP-1 Extensions
Scope: Artifact- and page-level brand provenance, relationship, and authority resolution

1. Purpose

The MSP-1 Brand Provenance Extension provides a lightweight mechanism for declaring the relationship between an individual artifact and one or more brands represented by that artifact.

Its purpose is not to describe a brand comprehensively, duplicate product specifications, or replace existing brand, advertising, or commerce protocols.

Instead, it provides an explicit semantic path from:

artifact → brand relationship → authoritative brand or product information

The extension is intended to reduce unnecessary inference when a model or agent encounters content that represents, sells, distributes, discusses, or otherwise relates to a brand that is distinct from the publisher of the artifact.

2. Problem

A publisher and the brand represented by an artifact are frequently not the same entity.

Examples include:

  • a retailer selling products from multiple manufacturers;

  • a marketplace listing products from many brands;

  • a dealer representing a manufacturer;

  • an agency presenting client work;

  • a distributor carrying third-party products;

  • an editorial publisher discussing branded products;

  • a co-branded product or campaign;

  • an affiliate publisher referring users to another company's product.

A product page may therefore have several distinct sources of authority.

For example:

Retailer
    authoritative for:
    - its product page
    - price
    - availability
    - fulfillment
    - commercial offer

Manufacturer
    authoritative for:
    - product identity
    - technical specifications
    - official documentation
    - product support

Brand
    authoritative for:
    - brand identity
    - brand representation
    - official brand resources

Without explicit semantic relationships, an agent must infer these distinctions from page content, structured data, search results, domain ownership, and external sources.

The Brand Provenance Extension provides those relationships directly.

3. Design Principle

The extension follows a central MSP-1 principle:

Declare consequential semantic context while leaving reasoning and task execution to the consuming agent.

The extension should not attempt to contain every fact about a brand or product.

It should instead provide enough information for the agent to determine:

  1. which brand is associated with the artifact;

  2. what relationship that brand has to the artifact;

  3. what entity is publishing the declaration;

  4. where authoritative brand information may be resolved;

  5. where authoritative product or subject-specific information may be resolved when deeper information is required.

This creates a form of progressive semantic resolution.

An agent consumes only as much information as its task requires.

4. Relationship to MSP-1 Core

MSP-1 core remains responsible for describing the artifact itself.

For example:

MSP-1 core
    identity
    canonical location
    description
    intent
    interpretive context
    provenance

The Brand Provenance Extension adds a separate semantic layer:

artifact
    ↓
brand association
    ↓
relationship
    ↓
brand authority
    ↓
optional product authority

The extension must not redefine or overload existing MSP-1 core terms.

In particular, a manufacturer resource must not be confused with the artifact's canonical location.

A retailer page may correctly declare:

canonical:
https://retailer.example/product/123

while separately resolving product authority to:

https://manufacturer.example/product/123/specifications

These URLs express different semantic relationships.

5. Relationship to the MSP-1 Provenance Extension

The Brand Provenance Extension is distinct from the MSP-1 Provenance Extension.

Provenance Extension

The Provenance Extension is entity-neutral and organizational in scope.

It may provide richer provenance declarations concerning organizations, entities, properties, relationships, lineage, origin, delegation, or other provenance structures.

It should not assume that the declarative entity is a brand.

Brand Provenance Extension

The Brand Provenance Extension is a specialized artifact-level application.

It addresses the narrower question:

What brand does this artifact represent, what is the publisher's relationship to that brand, and where can authoritative brand or product information be resolved?

The distinction avoids binding generalized provenance infrastructure to the narrower concept of a brand.

6. Core Use Case

Consider a retailer selling a Sony camera.

The retailer does not need to reproduce every technical specification provided by Sony.

The artifact could instead establish:

Retailer product page
        ↓
MSP-1 declaration
        ↓
Brand Provenance Extension
        ↓
Sony
        ↓
official Sony brand resource
        ↓
official Sony product information

If the user asks:

Where can I buy this camera?

The retailer artifact may contain sufficient information.

If the user asks:

Does this camera support a particular video format?

the agent can follow the authoritative manufacturer path only when that deeper information is required.

This reduces broad retrieval and unnecessary ingestion of third-party product pages, comparison sites, reviews, or duplicated specification databases.

7. Proposed Semantic Model

The exact vocabulary should remain subject to research, but the extension likely requires four conceptual components.

Brand Identity

Identifies the brand associated with the artifact.

Conceptually:

{
  "brand": {
    "name": "Sony"
  }
}

Relationship

Declares why the brand is associated with the artifact.

Possible relationship classes might eventually include concepts such as:

product
manufacturer
retailer
distributor
dealer
publisher
client
sponsor
partner
component
licensee

These values should not be finalized until broader use cases are evaluated.

The important requirement is that the relationship itself be explicit.

A list of brand names without relationships would still require the consuming model to infer why each brand appears.

Brand Authority

Provides a path to an authoritative brand-controlled resource.

Conceptually:

{
  "brandAuthority": "https://example.com/.well-known/brand.json"
}

The destination need not be limited to brand.json.

It may point to any compatible authoritative brand representation.

Subject or Product Authority

Optionally provides a more specific authoritative destination associated with the artifact's subject.

Conceptually:

{
  "productAuthority": "https://manufacturer.example/product/specifications"
}

This creates a direct path to deeper information without embedding that information in the extension itself.

8. Multiple Brand Associations

The extension should support multiple brand relationships per artifact.

For example, a product bundle could include:

Retailer
    ↓
Artifact

Artifact
    ├── Sony → primary product
    ├── Zeiss → component
    └── retailer brand → seller

Likewise, an editorial article may reference several brands with different semantic relationships.

The model should therefore be capable of representing a collection of brand provenance assertions rather than assuming one artifact equals one brand.

9. Interoperability

The Brand Provenance Extension should be protocol-agnostic.

It should not be designed as an MSP-1 reproduction of AdCP brand.json.

Instead, brand.json should be treated as one possible authoritative resolution target.

Conceptually:

MSP-1 artifact
       ↓
Brand Provenance Extension
       ↓
brand relationship
       ↓
authoritative brand resource
       ├── brand.json
       ├── another open protocol
       ├── manufacturer-controlled resource
       └── future compatible standard

This gives the extension broader utility and avoids coupling MSP-1 to the lifecycle of any single external protocol.

MSP-1 provides the semantic edge.

The external system provides the domain-specific depth.

10. Relationship to Commerce and Advertising Protocols

The Brand Provenance Extension should remain outside transactional and advertising execution.

It should not contain:

  • pricing;

  • inventory;

  • checkout instructions;

  • payment information;

  • fulfillment state;

  • advertising campaign instructions;

  • creative assets;

  • detailed product specifications;

  • complete brand style systems.

Those concerns belong to specialized systems.

A possible protocol stack becomes:

MSP-1
artifact identity and semantic clarity

        ↓

Brand Provenance Extension
artifact-to-brand relationship and authority routing

        ↓

Brand authority
brand.json or equivalent

        ↓

Product authority
manufacturer product resources

        ↓

Commerce / advertising systems
UCP / ACP / AdCP / other specialized protocols

The Brand Provenance Extension therefore operates as an interoperability layer rather than a replacement for those systems.

11. Authority Model

The extension should distinguish between different kinds of authority.

A retailer publishing a page can authoritatively state:

This artifact represents a Sony product.

That does not automatically make the retailer authoritative for every technical claim concerning the product.

The extension can therefore establish separate authority paths.

Artifact authority
    publisher

Brand authority
    brand owner

Product authority
    manufacturer

Commercial authority
    retailer or seller

The consuming agent remains responsible for determining which authority is relevant to its current task.

The declaration reduces ambiguity without prescribing the agent's reasoning.

12. Retrieval Benefits

The extension may provide significant retrieval efficiency.

Without an explicit authority path:

product page
    ↓
search
    ↓
comparison site
    ↓
second retailer
    ↓
review
    ↓
manufacturer
    ↓
reconcile conflicting information

With Brand Provenance:

product page
    ↓
declared manufacturer authority
    ↓
retrieve authoritative specification if needed

This can reduce:

  • unnecessary retrieval;

  • token consumption;

  • duplicated information;

  • conflicting product data;

  • semantic drift;

  • context contamination;

  • dependence on intermediary sources.

It therefore complements the broader MSP-1 ingestion-envelope philosophy by improving source selection before deeper retrieval occurs.

13. Non-Goals

The Brand Provenance Extension should not:

  • become a general brand-management schema;

  • reproduce brand.json;

  • define visual identity systems;

  • store complete product catalogs;

  • reproduce commerce schemas;

  • replace manufacturer documentation;

  • determine whether a publisher's claim is true;

  • rank competing sources;

  • prescribe agent behavior;

  • alter MSP-1 core semantics.

Its function should remain narrow:

Declare brand relationships and provide authoritative resolution paths.

14. Illustrative Declaration

The following is conceptual only and does not represent proposed final syntax.

{
  "brandProvenance": [
    {
      "name": "Sony",
      "relationship": "product",
      "brandAuthority": "https://sony.example/.well-known/brand.json",
      "subjectAuthority": "https://sony.example/products/example/specifications"
    }
  ]
}

A multi-brand example:

{
  "brandProvenance": [
    {
      "name": "Brand A",
      "relationship": "primary-product",
      "brandAuthority": "https://brand-a.example/.well-known/brand.json",
      "subjectAuthority": "https://brand-a.example/product/123"
    },
    {
      "name": "Brand B",
      "relationship": "component",
      "brandAuthority": "https://brand-b.example/.well-known/brand.json"
    }
  ]
}

The final vocabulary should be developed only after evaluating whether each term represents a durable semantic requirement rather than a single implementation scenario.

15. Development Questions

The concept should next investigate:

  1. What is the minimum declaration required to associate an artifact with an authoritative brand?

  2. Should brandAuthority and subject/product authority remain separate concepts?

  3. What relationship vocabulary is sufficiently general without becoming an ontology?

  4. Should relationships use controlled values, extensible values, or both?

  5. How should multiple brands be represented?

  6. How should a declaration distinguish manufacturer, seller, distributor, sponsor, client, component brand, and co-brand relationships?

  7. How should authority resources be identified when brand.json is unavailable?

  8. Can existing external identifiers be referenced without creating dependency on them?

  9. How should conflicting retailer and manufacturer assertions be handled by consuming agents?

  10. Which declarations belong specifically in Brand Provenance versus the broader Provenance Extension?

16. Proposed Concept Definition

Brand Provenance Extension

An MSP-1 extension for declaring artifact-level relationships between a publisher, one or more represented brands, and authoritative brand or subject-specific resources. The extension provides semantic provenance and resolution paths without duplicating brand, product, commerce, or advertising data maintained by specialized authoritative systems.

17. Guiding Principle

The Brand Provenance Extension should remain small enough that its purpose can be summarized in one sentence:

Tell the agent what brand this artifact represents, why that brand is associated with it, and where authoritative information can be found when deeper resolution is required.

The extension should provide the path.

The authoritative source should provide the depth.

The agent should provide the reasoning.