Agentic Reasoning Protocol (ARP): DNS-Bound Cryptographic Verification for Machine-Readable Entity Claims

This document specifies the Agentic Reasoning Protocol (ARP), a lightweight mechanism for cryptographically binding machine-readable entity claims to domain ownership via DNS TXT records. ARP enables AI agents and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines to verify that structured data published on a domain was authorized by the domain owner, preventing narrative injection and entity spoofing in generative search systems. ARP uses Ed25519 digital signatures [RFC8032], JSON Canonicalization Scheme (JCS) [RFC8785], and DNS TXT records to establish a chain of trust analogous to DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) [RFC6376] but designed specifically for the verification of semantic entity data consumed by autonomous AI agents.