English

CBCL: Safe Self-Extending Agent Communication

Cryptography and Security 2026-04-17 v1 Artificial Intelligence Formal Languages and Automata Theory Logic in Computer Science

Abstract

Agent communication languages (ACLs) enable heterogeneous agents to share knowledge and coordinate across diverse domains. This diversity demands extensibility, but expressive extension mechanisms can push the input language beyond the complexity classes where full validation is tractable. We present CBCL (Common Business Communication Language), an agent communication language that constrains all messages, including runtime language extensions, to the deterministic context-free language (DCFL) class. CBCL allows agents to define, transmit, and adopt domain-specific "dialect" extensions as first-class messages; three safety invariants (R1--R3), machine-checked in Lean 4 and enforced in a Rust reference implementation, prevent unbounded expansion, applying declared resource limits, and preserving core vocabulary. We formalize the language and its safety properties in Lean 4, implement a reference parser and dialect engine in Rust with property-based and differential tests, and extract a verified parser binary. Our results demonstrate that homoiconic protocol design, where extension definitions share the same representation as ordinary messages, can be made provably safe. As autonomous agents increasingly extend their own communication capabilities, formally bounding what they can express to each other is a precondition for oversight.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2604.14512,
  title  = {CBCL: Safe Self-Extending Agent Communication},
  author = {Hugo O'Connor},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.14512},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

10 pages. Accepted at IEEE LangSec Workshop 2026 (camera-ready). Reference implementation, Lean 4 formalization, and verified parser: https://codeberg.org/anuna/cbcl-rs ; Nostr transport binding: https://codeberg.org/anuna/cbcl-nostr

R2 v1 2026-07-01T12:11:50.115Z