Thanks for your interest in improving the Swift SDK for ARCP. This document covers how to report issues, propose changes, and get a change merged.
By participating you agree to the Code of Conduct.
ARCP is two things in two places, and a change belongs to exactly one of them:
- The protocol — the wire format, message semantics, lease rules, error taxonomy, feature flags. These live in the specification repository. If your idea changes what goes on the wire or what a conformant runtime must do, it is a spec change — open it there, not here. This SDK implements the spec; it does not define it.
- This SDK — how the protocol is expressed idiomatically in Swift: bugs, ergonomics, performance, missing-but-specified features, docs, tests. Those belong here.
When in doubt, open an issue here and we'll redirect if it's really a protocol question.
A change to this SDK must keep it a faithful client of ARCP v1.1 (draft). Concretely:
- Don't invent wire behavior. No envelope fields, event kinds, error codes, or feature flags that the spec doesn't define. If you need one, it's a spec proposal first.
- Negotiate honestly. Only advertise a feature flag in
session.helloonce the SDK actually implements it. The feature matrix in the README must match what the code negotiates — a row markedSupportedis a promise. - Respect the semantics. Sequence numbers stay gap-free and monotonic;
LEASE_EXPIREDandBUDGET_EXHAUSTEDstay non-retryable; the effective feature set is the intersection of client and runtime advertisements. Tests must not paper over a semantic the spec requires. - Stay layered. This SDK controls runtimes. It does not expose tools (that's MCP) or export telemetry (that's OpenTelemetry). PRs that blur those layers will be asked to move the logic out.
Open an issue with: the SDK version and Swift version, the runtime you
connected to, a minimal reproduction (the smallest program that triggers it),
what you expected, and what happened. A failing test is the best possible bug
report. Wire-level traces (the envelopes exchanged) help enormously for protocol
behavior — redact any auth.token or provisioned-credential value first.
For anything beyond a small fix, open an issue describing the problem before writing code, so we can agree on the approach. Small, focused PRs review faster than large ones; if a change is big, say so early and we'll help break it down.
The SDK targets Swift 6.1 or later (CI runs Swift 6.1 on macOS 14+; the package also builds on recent Ubuntu LTS releases). Install a matching toolchain from swift.org/install or via Xcode 16+, then clone the repo and resolve dependencies with Swift Package Manager:
git clone https://github.com/agentruntimecontrolprotocol/swift-sdk.git
cd swift-sdk
swift package resolve
swift build --build-testsNo extra bootstrap is required — swift-format and the DocC plugin are vendored
as package dependencies and invoked via swift run / swift package plugin.
Two layers must pass before a PR merges:
-
Unit tests — this SDK's own suite:
swift test --parallel --enable-code-coverage -
Conformance — the SDK's behavior against the reference runtime. New protocol-facing code (session negotiation, event sequencing, lease handling, error mapping) needs a test that exercises the real exchange, not a mock that assumes the answer. The integration suite under
Tests/ARCPTests/Integration/drives the bundledARCPRuntimeover the in-processMemoryTransport, soswift testalready runs end-to-end conformance with no external setup. To point a sample or recipe at an out-of-process runtime, runswift run arcp servein one shell and connect from the other with theStdioTransportorWebSocketTransport.
CI runs both on every PR. A PR that changes which feature flags the SDK negotiates must also update the README feature matrix in the same change.
Formatting and lint are enforced by swift-format using the rules in
.swift-format. Run both before pushing:
swift package plugin --allow-writing-to-package-directory format-source-code
swift package plugin lint-source-code -- --strict
swift build -c release -Xswiftc -warnings-as-errorsMatch the surrounding code. Public API changes need doc comments and an entry in the changelog. Prefer clarity over cleverness in a library others build on.
-
Write focused commits with present-tense, imperative subjects (
add result_chunk reassembly, notadded/adds). -
Reference the issue a PR closes (
Closes #123). -
Keep the PR description honest about scope and any spec sections touched.
-
Rebase on the default branch and ensure CI is green before requesting review.
-
Sign off your commits to certify the Developer Certificate of Origin:
git commit -s -m "your message"
Releases are cut by maintainers. The package is distributed through Swift
Package Manager: a maintainer tags a semver release on the default branch
(x.y.z), pushes the tag, and the Swift Package Index
picks it up automatically for downstream consumers that depend on the repo URL.
The SDK is versioned with semantic versioning independently of the protocol
version it speaks; a protocol version bump is noted in the changelog when the
negotiated ARCP version changes.
By contributing, you agree that your contributions are licensed under the project's Apache-2.0 license.