Persona Object Protocol: Portable Persona Objects for AI Systems

This record provides the public technical report version of POP-1, an early protocol paper on the Persona Object Protocol (POP). POP is proposed as a lightweight public draft protocol for portable persona objects in AI systems. The report argues for isolating a persona object layer distinct from prompts, local role settings, complete agent specifications, and tool-connection protocols. As AI systems increasingly rely on persona-like role framing, most existing implementations still represent persona through scattered prompt fragments, system settings, or application-specific logic rather than as a portable object. POP addresses this gap by focusing on how persona objects can be represented, attached, projected, versioned, and minimally governed. The report introduces a minimal object structure, minimal normative semantics, a minimal conformance checklist, and pilot validation results covering schema conformance, cross-runtime projection fidelity, and comparison against monolithic configuration. This record is released as a Zenodo-first technical report and public research object. It is intended as an early protocol paper and publicly citable artifact rather than as a mature interoperability standard.