XEL Architecture Boundaries

XEL is an open protocol for Living Characters. GEN can publish into XEL and provide hosted services around it, but GEN is not the protocol boundary. This document defines what belongs in the open protocol, what lives on-chain, what is delegated to third-party providers, what is presented at XEL.xyz, and what remains a GEN-provided service.

Boundary Principles

A Living Character must be mintable and runnable without GEN persona synthesis.
Protocol artifacts must stay provider-neutral: schemas define required capabilities, not a preferred vendor implementation.
GEN-specific services may improve the creation, hosting, monitoring, billing, and support experience, but they are optional product layers unless a schema explicitly marks an input as required.
Official packages, contracts, schemas, manifests, and protocol releases should be authored and signed as XEL, not GEN.
On-chain contracts enforce identity, ownership, authority, lineage, spend policy, pause, and migration. They do not embed private prompts, provider credentials, or hosted-runtime logic.
Existing GEN-4014 x402 wallet ledger and agent-discovery work is an integration input for XEL. XEL should verify and reference that work instead of rebuilding it inside this repo.
GEN-4013 persona synthesis is a GEN add-on. XEL defines the persona artifact boundary only and does not duplicate the synthesis implementation.

Open Source Protocol

The open source protocol is the neutral contract between creators, owners, wallets, runtimes, storage systems, and discovery surfaces.

Included:

Protocol concepts and terminology: Living Character, aNFT, Proof of Genesis, authority, delegates, memory roots, runtime manifests, and migration.
JSON schemas for mint manifests, persona artifacts, runtime configuration, provider capability descriptors, discovery metadata, and Proof of Genesis records.
Reference interfaces for wallets, storage, encryption, inference, retrieval, payment, discovery, and runtime providers.
Invariant and conformance tests that validate protocol behavior independent of any one vendor.
Example manifests and reference runtime configs that show valid protocol use without requiring GEN-hosted services.
Deployment and migration documentation for open protocol components.

Excluded:

GEN app implementation details.
GEN persona synthesis pipelines, DW social ingestion, gen.pro/assets evidence processing, or private classification logic from GEN-4013.
Hosted billing, support, monitoring, admin tooling, and provider orchestration.
Third-party provider credentials, commercial contracts, or private operational runbooks.

On-Chain Contracts

The on-chain layer is the source of authority for the aNFT and protocol-enforced rights.

Included:

Sui Move packages for aNFT identity, ownership, transfer, delegation, lineage, pause, recovery, migration, and spend policy.
Proof of Genesis anchoring and references to off-chain content-addressed artifacts.
Owner and delegate authority checks for updates that affect character state, provider bindings, treasury policy, or migration.
Contract-level events needed by indexers, XEL.xyz, wallets, and third-party runtimes.
Invariant tests covering ownership, authorization, pause, migration, lineage integrity, and spend-policy constraints.

Excluded:

Raw persona text or private system prompts.
Provider API keys, runtime secrets, or encrypted payload decryption keys.
Hosted inference, storage retrieval, billing execution, moderation queues, or support workflows.
Chain-specific wallet login UX for XEL.xyz user accounts; wallet sign-in is an application auth concern separate from a Living Character’s ownership and treasury policy.

Third-Party Providers

Third-party providers supply replaceable infrastructure around the protocol.

Provider categories:

Storage and retrieval providers such as Walrus or other content-addressed storage systems.
Encryption and access-control providers such as Seal or equivalent key-management layers.
Sui RPC nodes, indexers, event processors, and wallet adapters.
Wallets, including Sui wallet sign-in as the default user-auth path and Phantom support in the immediate scope where applicable.
Inference providers, embedding providers, memory stores, and retrieval systems.
Payment facilitators, x402-compatible payment services, treasury venues, staking venues, and oracles.
Agent-discovery surfaces and metadata registries, using GEN-4014 work as an existing input where it fits the XEL protocol.

Protocol expectations:

Providers should be swappable behind capability descriptors and runtime configuration.
Provider-specific extensions must not become required protocol fields unless adopted through a documented protocol version.
Provider failures should be representable in runtime status and observability records without requiring GEN systems.
Credentials and commercial terms stay outside the open protocol repository.

XEL.xyz

XEL.xyz is the public destination for the protocol and for published Living Characters.

Included:

Public documentation for the protocol, schemas, contracts, provider interfaces, and examples.
Published Living Character pages that can display public metadata, provenance, ownership state, lineage, authorized delegates, runtime availability, and Proof of Genesis references.
Wallet-based user onboarding and sign-in for public product flows, with Sui as the default path and Phantom support in the immediate scope.
Links to reference implementations, contract addresses, conformance status, and provider compatibility notes.
Public discovery files and agent metadata generated from protocol artifacts and informed by existing GEN-4014 agent-discovery work where applicable.

Excluded:

GEN-only admin tooling.
Private persona synthesis steps, source evidence, classified prompts, or proprietary scoring.
Billing dashboards, support case tooling, provider account management, and operational secrets.
Any assumption that using XEL.xyz requires GEN-hosted runtime services.

GEN-Provided Services

GEN is a product provider and distribution surface for XEL. GEN-provided services may be used by creators who want a managed creation and hosting experience, but they are not required for the open protocol.

Included:

GEN app integration and the “Publish to XEL” flow.
Optional GEN persona synthesis add-on from GEN-4013, which can transform user inputs, files, socials, and asset evidence into a classified encrypted persona artifact.
Hosted runtime/provider services, memory orchestration defaults, inference routing, retrieval, monitoring, billing, support, and admin tools.
GEN-specific onboarding, usage analytics, safety operations, and customer-support workflows.
Integration with existing GEN-4014 x402 wallet ledger and agent-discovery work after verification against XEL requirements.

Protocol boundary:

GEN is not the package signer or protocol author for official XEL releases.
GEN synthesis may produce a persona artifact accepted by the protocol, but the synthesis process itself is not part of XEL core.
Direct prompt mode remains a first-class protocol path.
A user-visible prompt is not required when GEN produces a classified encrypted prompt.
GEN-hosted runtime defaults must be expressed as replaceable provider bindings whenever they affect protocol artifacts.

Persona Creation Boundary

XEL supports two persona creation modes.

Direct Prompt Mode

Direct prompt mode is the neutral open-protocol path. The creator supplies a persona/system prompt or equivalent persona artifact directly. The protocol validates artifact structure, references, ownership authority, encryption status where applicable, and runtime compatibility.

Direct prompt mode must not depend on GEN services, private GEN datasets, or GEN-managed source evidence.

GEN Synthesized Classified Prompt

GEN synthesized classified prompt mode is an optional GEN service. GEN may ingest user-provided materials, DW socials, and gen.pro/assets evidence through GEN-4013 workstreams, then produce a classified encrypted persona artifact.

XEL’s responsibility is limited to:

Defining the persona artifact schema.
Recording whether a persona artifact is direct, encrypted, classified, provider-produced, or user-visible.
Defining references required for Proof of Genesis without exposing private prompt contents.
Accepting the artifact in mint and runtime manifests when the owner authorizes publication.

XEL must not reimplement the GEN-4013 synthesis pipeline.

Agent Discovery And x402 Boundary

Agent discovery and x402 payment metadata are integration inputs, not greenfield XEL duplicates. GEN-4014 already tracks wallet ledger and agent-discovery work across backend, API docs, static agent files, and support drafts.

XEL should:

Map GEN-4014 discovery fields into XEL provider and character discovery schemas.
Reuse compatible x402 wallet ledger concepts for payment capability and spend-policy metadata.
Keep protocol schemas vendor-neutral even when GEN-4014 is the first integration source.
Document gaps where GEN-4014 does not yet satisfy XEL requirements.

XEL should not:

Copy GEN-4014 implementation into this repository.
Make x402 the only allowed payment mechanism.
Require GEN agent-discovery hosting for a Living Character to exist.

Open Timing

Open Early

Terminology, architecture boundaries, and scope documents.
Core protocol schemas for persona artifacts, mint manifests, runtime manifests, provider descriptors, discovery metadata, and Proof of Genesis records.
Sui Move contract source and invariant tests for identity, ownership, authority, lineage, pause, spend policy, and migration.
Reference examples proving direct prompt mode does not require GEN synthesis.
Provider interface documentation and conformance expectations.
Public XEL.xyz protocol documentation and published-character metadata format.

Open Later

Hardened reference runtime implementation once interfaces stabilize.
Additional provider adapters after the capability model is proven.
Expanded cross-chain wallet linking beyond immediate Sui and Phantom sign-in scope.
Advanced migration tooling, indexer packages, dashboards, and operational playbooks that are useful outside GEN.
Optional SDKs and CLI tooling after schemas and contracts settle.

Not Open Core

GEN-4013 persona synthesis implementation.
GEN-hosted billing, support, monitoring, admin, provider-routing, and safety operations.
Private prompts, source evidence, user files, social-ingestion results, provider credentials, or customer data.
Commercial provider agreements or internal incident runbooks.