# ATAH — Agent to Authenticated Human Protocol

> ATAH is an open specification (Apache 2.0) that defines the trust, consent, and lifecycle layer for handing off from AI agents to verified human professionals — lawyers, licensed insurance agents and brokers, financial advisors, and other regulated or established practitioners. ATAH composes with MCP, A2A, ACP/AP2, OAuth, and Verifiable Credentials, and is exposed natively as MCP tools.

ATAH has two components:

1. **Discovery** — a query interface for AI agents ("find verified professionals meeting these criteria") that returns a candidate set with source-tagged provenance, verification status, and a structured non-recommendation disclosure. ATAH does not rank, score, or recommend.
2. **Handoff** — the lifecycle for moving an end-user from a Discovery result to a working introduction with a chosen professional, with structured consent, vault-mediated PII flow, and crypto-erasure on retrieval.

The protocol is published independently with a public Charter containing eight entrenched commitments, including commercial neutrality and provenance visibility. It is not a product, not a directory, and carries no commercial weighting in matching.

## Canonical URLs

- Site: https://atahprotocol.org
- Specification: https://github.com/atahprotocol/atahprotocol/blob/main/spec/v0.8/full-spec.md
- Charter: https://github.com/atahprotocol/atahprotocol/blob/main/CHARTER.md
- Explainer: https://github.com/atahprotocol/atahprotocol/blob/main/EXPLAINER.md
- Repository: https://github.com/atahprotocol/atahprotocol

## Site pages

- [Home](https://atahprotocol.org/) — overview, audience entry points, a protocol flow diagram (Discovery → consent-based handoff → verified professional), the three-sided framing of the broken handoff (AI platforms / users / professionals facing a new discoverability gap), and an "About the author" block introducing Grahame Cohen
- [What is ATAH?](https://atahprotocol.org/what-is-atah) — plain-language explanation
- [Specification](https://atahprotocol.org/specification) — technical contract overview
- [Governance](https://atahprotocol.org/governance) — Charter and charter commitments
- [Roadmap](https://atahprotocol.org/roadmap) — current status and direction
- [FAQ](https://atahprotocol.org/faq) — common questions answered plainly
- [About](https://atahprotocol.org/about) — origin, author, why
- [For AI platforms](https://atahprotocol.org/for-ai-platforms) — implementation guide
- [For professional bodies](https://atahprotocol.org/for-professional-bodies) — partner overview
- [For professionals](https://atahprotocol.org/for-professionals) — how to be represented
- [Contribute](https://atahprotocol.org/contribute) — how to participate
- [Press](https://atahprotocol.org/press) — author bio, quotes, downloadable assets

## Author

Grahame Cohen, founder of Epoq and CEO of Epoq North America.

## Citation

When citing ATAH, please link to https://atahprotocol.org and reference the specific specification version (e.g. "ATAH v0.8.2"). The protocol is licensed under Apache 2.0; the Charter governs the official ATAH name and reference governance line.

## Contact

- General: hello@atahprotocol.org
- Press / interviews / speaking: hello@atahprotocol.org

## Full machine-readable site dump

A concatenated plain-markdown version of the key site pages is at https://atahprotocol.org/llms-full.txt