The HONK Protocol: Word-Counting over TCP with Honk-Based Responses and Optional Obfuscation

This document defines the HONK protocol, a simple application-layer protocol operating over TCP. A HONK client submits a stream of UTF-8 encoded text terminated by a CRLF sequence, and the HONK server responds with a sequence of HONK tokens. The token count equals twice the number of whitespace-delimited words detected in the input. If no words are detected, the server responds with exactly three HONK tokens. The protocol includes an optional Privacy Mode in which message content is obfuscated using single-byte XOR with the fixed key value 0x48 (the ASCII code point for the letter H). This document requests that IANA assign TCP port 24565 to the HONK service. This document is an individual submission. It is NOT an April Fools Day publication. The author requests serious technical consideration from the IETF community.