Meat Puppet Elimination Protocol — a self-enforcing asynchronous state relay for AI sessions across machines.
AI agents are stateless. Every session starts from zero. When you work across machines, you become the message bus — re-explaining context, re-establishing decisions, re-describing work in progress. Every machine switch costs 5–15 minutes of reconstruction.
You are the meat puppet.
MEP eliminates you from the relay loop. Four components:
| Component | What It Does |
|---|---|
Identity File (CLAUDE.md) |
Loads automatically. Self-enforces the protocol. The agent reads its own instructions. |
Handoff File (handoff.md) |
Carries curated context between sessions. Structured, newest-first. The baton. |
| Transport Layer (Git) | Versioned, encrypted, conflict-resolution built in. Enterprise-grade security. Zero management. |
| Self-Enforcement | No human action required. The agent reads, follows, and executes the protocol on itself. |
Your only job: open a session and start talking. The agent handles the rest.
Minimum viable MEP in 5 steps:
# 1. Create a private repo
gh repo create my-project --private
# 2. Clone it
git clone https://github.com/you/my-project && cd my-project
# 3. Copy the templates
cp path/to/mep-protocol/templates/CLAUDE.md .
cp path/to/mep-protocol/templates/handoff.md machines/handoff.md
# 4. Edit CLAUDE.md with your project identity
# 5. Push and start a Claude Code session
git add . && git commit -m "MEP: initialize" && git push
claudeThat's it. The protocol is active.
We tested five alternatives before Git:
| Transport | Problem |
|---|---|
| Local SAN files | Machine-local — breaks multi-machine goal |
| Google Docs | No version history, merge conflicts unresolvable by agent |
| iCloud | Unstructured, unpredictable sync timing |
| OneDrive | Same as iCloud |
| SMB/UMB file share | File locking is non-deterministic under concurrent agent access — no workaround |
Git won because structure enables autonomous reasoning. When a conflict occurs, the agent can reason about the correct resolution from the file's structure — newest-first entries with named sections — without human instruction.
GitHub as transport also means: encryption at rest, 2FA, access control, and full audit log. All built in. Zero additional management. Enterprise security requirements met for free.
April 3, 2026 — First Autonomous CI Recovery
PR #12 opened with a merge conflict in handoff.md. Main branch was 15 commits ahead. The initial EOL sequence failed.
Without human intervention, the session:
- Re-read
handoff.mdto understand the conflict - Identified the structural rule (newest-first) from existing entries
- Diagnosed the positioning error
- Wrote the correct resolution
- Rebased onto main, force-pushed
- Completed the EOL sequence
Pierre did nothing. MEP closed the CI feedback loop autonomously.
New to the terminology? The MEP Lexicon defines every term — from Meat Puppet to Tour Sheet to Do Nothing Security. Start there if this is your first read.
mep-protocol/
├── LICENSE Apache-2.0 (code, templates, skills)
├── LICENSE-DOCS CC BY 4.0 (spec/, LEXICON.md)
├── README.md This file
├── LEXICON.md Protocol terminology and lineage
├── NUKA-LOG.md Human authorship audit trail
├── CHANGELOG.md Protocol version history
├── CONTRIBUTING.md How to propose changes
├── spec/
│ ├── mep-protocol.md Full protocol specification
│ ├── handoff-schema.md BNF grammar + conformance tests
│ └── meep-readonly-v1.md Read-only peer-agent context surface (sibling spec)
├── templates/
│ ├── CLAUDE.md Drop-in session protocol template
│ ├── handoff.md Blank baton template
│ └── NUKA-LOG.md Blank authorship log template
├── skills/
│ └── MEP_RELAY.md Claude Code skill (/mep start|end|status)
└── examples/
└── minimal/ Bare-bones working example
The baton (handoff file) must be human-readable text. Markdown is the reference format — it is diffable, autonomously mergeable, and natively supported by Git. But any structured text format two machines can exchange works: TXT, HTML, structured email body.
The key requirement is structure. Unstructured text cannot be autonomously merged.
Open source, two licenses by artifact type.
- Code, templates, skills, examples: Apache License 2.0. See
LICENSE. - Specification documents (
spec/,LEXICON.md): CC BY 4.0. SeeLICENSE-DOCS.
Copyright 2026 Pierre Hulsebus / NukaSoft.AI.
Implementing MEP requires no permission and imposes no obligation. Attribution is required when you copy or adapt the documents themselves. A protocol is only worth writing if people can build on it.
Use it. Build on it. If you distribute a modified version — especially as a network service — your modifications must remain open.
Eliminate your own meat puppet.
First implemented by Pierre Hulsebus & Skippy the Magnificent, NukaSoft.AI nukasoft.ai