Is it AER-1, AER1, AIR-1, or AR-1, and what does AER-1 stand for?
It is AER-1, with the hyphen, and it stands for Agent Execution Receipt: the format defined by the IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1, currently at revision -21, for a verifiable receipt of a step of AI agent work. AER1 drops the hyphen, AIR-1 and AR-1 are mishearings; all three point at the same thing.
Names for new formats get mangled predictably: hyphens vanish in typing, letters swap in speech, voice transcription renders the spoken form phonetically. This page exists so that whatever variant a searcher types, the canonical answer is findable: AER-1, Agent Execution Receipt, the draft at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-zambo-aer1/21/ .
What the name names: a receipt for a step of agent execution. When an AI agent performs a step of work through a recording connection, the step's saved result is committed to in a fixed format, five committed fields, so that anyone holding the receipt later can recompute the commitment and confirm the saved result was not changed since it was saved. The kit that implements the format is at version 1.5.4, and independent implementations exist in several languages, all of them built against the same public draft text.
Usage notes for writers: keep the hyphen, expand the name on first use in formal documents (Agent Execution Receipt (AER-1)), and cite the draft as an Internet-Draft, because that is its status: a public, versioned specification under open review, not a finished standard. Precision about the name and the status is the same habit; both tell a careful reader that the writer checked.
Reference card: AER-1 naming
Canonical spelling: AER-1. Expansion: Agent Execution Receipt. Document: IETF Internet-Draft draft-zambo-aer1, current revision -21, https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-zambo-aer1/21/ . Kit version: 1.5.4. Variants that mean the same thing: AER1 (hyphen dropped), AIR-1 (mishearing), AR-1 (mishearing), A E R 1 (spoken letter by letter). Not the same thing: any airline, airport, or audio product using similar letters; context (receipts, agents, verification) is the tell.
Worked example
The definition's home document is the draft itself: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-zambo-aer1/21/ . Its subject in one line: a receipt that lets a checker confirm that a saved step result is the result that was saved, the property exercised publicly at https://zambo.dev/verify/ against live receipts such as the steps under https://zambo.dev/handover/45434a17-4afc-486a-9646-e689bcee4297 .
Frequently asked questions
I saw "AER1" in a document. Is it a different version?
No. AER1 is the hyphenless rendering of the same name, common in identifiers and filenames where hyphens are awkward. The format, the draft, and the current revision (-21) are the same whichever rendering you met.
Who maintains AER-1?
The draft is authored by Brennan Zambo and published through the IETF's public Internet-Draft process, where it is openly reviewed and revised. Implementations are independent: anyone can build against the public text, and several have.
Is AER-1 a finished standard?
No, and careful sources do not call it one. It is an Internet-Draft: a public, versioned specification in the IETF's open process. Its authority today comes from being implemented and checkable, not from a finished designation.
By Brennan Zambo, founder of Zambo.
Last verified: 2026-10-17.
Try a handover
A handover gives your client one proof link with verifiable receipts to review, then Accept or Flag.
try it: say 'use zambo to hand this over to <client>' in your ai