# Runa Protocol `runa-protocol` defines versioned request, response, and event data contracts for clients and the `runa-server` dispatcher. It is independent of transport and runtime implementation. The `runa-server` executable currently accepts JSON Lines over stdin and emits one response line per valid request to stdout. It is a local child-process transport, not a network endpoint, and provides no authentication. ## Version 1 Every request and response carries `version: 1`. Requests also carry a non-empty `request_id` used to correlate the response. A server must reject unsupported versions with `unsupported_version` rather than interpreting a request using a different contract. Events carry the protocol version and do not have a request ID. Requests have a tagged command object: ```json { "version": 1, "request_id": "req-1", "command": { "operation": "send", "parameters": { "actor_id": 7, "message": { "kind": 2, "value": 9 } } } } ``` The version 1 operations are behavior publication, rollback, lookup, source retrieval, actor spawn, send, tick, inspect, actor listing, event retrieval, stop, restart, pause, resume, cancellation, and behavior installation. Migration closures are intentionally excluded: they are host callbacks, not portable wire values. Responses echo the request ID and carry either a typed reply or a protocol error. Events use a separate versioned envelope. Actor and behavior snapshots are wire DTOs, not serialized runtime objects; implementation identities are represented by their stable display strings. The server maps known service failures to the defined error codes and otherwise uses `runtime_failure` rather than claiming a more specific category. `get_events` drains and returns the events currently accumulated by this single-worker image. It is not a durable subscription or replayable event log. The stdio transport limits each request line to 1 MiB before parsing. Malformed JSON or an oversized line terminates the stream with an error on stderr; no protocol response is emitted when a request cannot be decoded. EOF cleanly terminates the process. Any future network transport must impose its own message and request-size limits before dispatch. The current validation checks the protocol version, request ID, positive actor/revision identifiers where required, non-empty behavior names, mailbox capacity, and instruction budget. Behavior-name grammar, actor existence, current behavior revisions, mailbox capacity at send time, and all runtime invariants remain authoritative at the application-service boundary.