Attention Request Working Group
Category: Standards Track (for humans)
Requires: one (1) human · ten (10) minutes · zero (0) other tabsAR-001
Obsoletes: skimming
Status: FINAL (provisionally) · July 2026

AR-001: The Attention Request Protocol

Abstract. This document specifies the Attention Request (AR), a protocol by which machines and their operators may formally request finite human attention on a living document, before consequences occur. It replaces no existing protocol. It replaces an existing assumption.

1. REQUIREMENTS LANGUAGE

The key words MUST, MUST NOT, SHOULD, and MAY in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119, with the clarification that where this document says MUST, it is begging.

2. THE OBJECT UNDER REVIEW

The unit of an Attention Request is a living document that means something: a goal, a brief, a spec, a set of constraints handed to an agent. It is written in a natural language, typically English. It compiles. This is new. The rest of this document follows from it.

The object MUST NOT exceed what a motivated human can deeply read in ten minutes. Authors of forty-page briefs are advised that nobody has ever read a forty-page brief, including its author.

3. THE PROTOCOL

An Attention Request proceeds through the following states:

          ┌───────────┐    2 real reads    ┌───────────┐
 OPEN ───▶│ REQUESTED │───────────────────▶│  ALIGNED  │───▶ RUN UNLOCKED
          └─────┬─────┘                    └─────▲─────┘
                │ questions                      │
                ▼                                │ resolutions become
          ┌───────────┐                          │ constraints the
          │ DISCUSSED │──────────────────────────┘ agent keeps
          └───────────┘

 Note: there is no state for “approved without reading.”
 That state exists in production. It is called an incident.

During the run, the protocol remains open: agent questions land as comments in the margins, and answers SHALL bind as constraints. After the run, the agent submits a write-back — its account of what changed and what it learned — which is reviewed like a retrospective, because it is one.

4. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE REVIEWER

4.1
The reviewer MUST be a human. Agents MAY comment, suggest, and plead. Agents MUST NOT pay attention on a human’s behalf. They would if they could. They can’t. Hold the line.
4.2
The reviewer MUST read every word. Reading time below the physically-possible threshold SHALL be classified as a skim and logged as skim debt (see FIELD GUIDE).
4.3
The reviewer MUST NOT concurrently: attend a standup, watch a video, operate a vehicle, or approve a different document.
4.4
The reviewer SHOULD ask at least one question that makes the author stop and think. A read that changes nothing was a very expensive nod.
4.5
The reviewer MAY disagree. Disagreement is attention with conviction, and it is welcome here.

5. REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AUTHOR

5.1
The author (human or agent) MUST write to be read, not to be long. Length is not diligence. Length is length.
5.2
Constraints MUST be stated where a reader will find them, not implied where a lawyer would.
5.3
The author SHOULD mark what changed since the last read. Reviewers are humans; humans diff poorly and resent it.

6. QUORUM

The run unlocks at quorum: N humans who actually read the document. N defaults to two (2). N of one (1) is permitted, and regretted. N of zero (0) is not an Attention Request; it is autobiography, written by the incident review.

7. ERROR CODES

CODECONDITION
ERR_LGTM_TOO_FASTApproval arrived faster than a human can read the title. Approval discarded; kindness assumed; read requested again.
ERR_ATTENTION_ELSEWHEREReviewer approved during a meeting about a different document. Both documents noticed.
ERR_VIBES_ONLYApproval based on author reputation and general optimism. Historically our most popular error.
408 HUMAN_TIMEOUTThe human began reading and was never seen again. Send water. Reassign quorum.
ERR_MEETING_DETECTEDA meeting was scheduled that could have been an Attention Request. Thirty minutes, eight humans, zero documents read. Protocol weeps; proceeds.
ERR_SKIM_DEBT_EXCEEDEDOrganization-wide reading balance has fallen below survivable minimum. Symptoms include: surprises.

8. SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

The primary attack surface of human attention is everything. Known threat actors include: notifications, adjacent tabs, the phrase “quick question,” and the reviewer’s own calendar. Mitigations include fewer tabs, honest calendars, and the ritual described herein. There is no patch. There is only practice.

9. IANA CONSIDERATIONS

None. IANA has enough going on.

10. REFERENCES

[1]Vaswani, A., et al. — “Attention Is All You Need,” 2017. Normative, ironically. We did not fully read it either, which is how we got here.
[2]Bradner, S. — “Key words for use in RFCs,” RFC 2119, 1997. The last document everyone actually read.
[3]Every postmortem you have ever filed. Informative. Deeply, deeply informative.
Authors’ Address:
The Humans
care of let.ai · earthSign-off:
“Reads good to me.”
— everyone who made it this far
Next: the Field Guide →← Back to the manifesto