ChatGPT Invents a New Language

You want a language that’s shorter than English, clearer than email, and friendly to both humans and machines. English will be offended, but it’ll survive. Here’s a purpose‑built micro‑language that’s fast to write, trivial to parse, and hard to misunderstand.

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STAMP

Structured Terse Annotated Message Protocol
A compact, role‑labeled writing system for human–AI communication.

0) Design goals

• Succinct: compresses everyday messages by labeling roles instead of fussing with word order.
• Explicit: no hidden grammar; every clause names its parts.
• Learnable: a dozen tags and three operator rules.
• Parseable: deterministic, whitespace‑delimited, ASCII‑only.
• Standards‑aligned: dates are ISO 8601; quantities are bare numbers with units; evidence and certainty are explicit. ISO 8601 avoids the “11/12 means what?” fiasco by fixing a single unambiguous format. (Wikipedia)

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1) Core idea in one breath

A STAMP clause is a bag of labeled slots. Order never matters. Every clause must contain one V: slot (the predicate). Most clauses also have A: (agent) and P: (patient). These labels are the classic semantic roles used across linguistics, so both people and parsers instantly know who did what to whom. (Wikipedia)

A:Alex V:send.pst P:draft R:Bo L:email T:2025-09-11T17:00

“Alex sent the draft to Bo by email at 17:00 on 2025‑09‑11.”

This “role-first” approach mirrors frame semantics: you fill the roles relevant to the action. (Wikipedia)

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2) Alphabet of slots (the only dozen you must memorize)

Slot	Meaning	Typical value
A:	Agent/doer	A:Alex, A:team
V:	Verb/predicate (with dot-features)	V:meet.pst, V:ship.fut.pfv
P:	Patient/thing affected	P:report, P:server
R:	Recipient/beneficiary	R:client, R:Bo
L:	Location or channel	L:NYC, L:video, L:/url
T:	Time (ISO 8601)	T:2025-09-11, T:2025-09-11T09:30Z
D:	Duration	D:45m, D:2h
Q:	Quantity/measure	Q:3, Q:4kg
M:	Manner/method/style	M:quiet, M:expedite
C:	Cause/reason	C:deadline, C:policy
H:	Condition (“if…”)	H:approved, H:X (if not)
K:	Evidence/confidence	K:seen, K:reported, K:p=0.8

Optional extras when needed:

• I: instrument/means (I:script, I:forklift)
• G: goal/purpose (G:publish)
• S: scope/topic (S:budget)
• B: background context (B:FY25)

Value types

• Bare words are stems: report, ship, urgent.
• Proper names prepend @: A:@Mina, L:@NYC.
• Numbers and dates are plain: Q:12, T:2025-09-11. ISO 8601 is preferred because it is universal and machine-safe. (Wikipedia)

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3) Verb features (dot‑suffixes, stackable)

• Tense: .prs, .pst, .fut
• Aspect: .prg ongoing, .pfv completed, .hab habitual
• Voice: .pas passive if you actually need it
• Mood: .imp imperative; questions use ? operator

Examples:

• V:review.pst.pfv “reviewed (finished)”
• V:ship.fut.prg “will be shipping”
• V:approve.pst.pas “was approved”

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4) Operators and punctuation

• Clause boundary: end of line or ;
• Conjunction: + joins clauses
• Alternative: | offers choices
• Cause→effect: > relates clauses
• Negation: prefix X on the slot it negates or on V: to negate the whole action
• Question: prefix ? on the clause
• Imperative: prefix ! on the clause
• Grouping: [...] for subclauses

Examples

! A:you V:send.imp P:invoice R:@Acme T:2025-09-15

Command: send the invoice to Acme by the 15th.

? A:we V:meet.fut L:video T:2025-09-12T09:00Z

Question: shall we meet then?

A:@Rae V:merge.pst P:branch=feature-x > A:@Rae V:deploy.pst L:staging

Sequence/cause.

A:@Noor V:Xapprove.pst P:budget C:overlimit

Noor did not approve because over limit.

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5) Minimal syntax (ABNF‑ish)

CLAUSE   = [OP] SLOT *(SP SLOT)
OP       = "!" / "?"                       ; imperative or question
SLOT     = KEY ":" VALUE
KEY      = "A"/"V"/"P"/"R"/"L"/"T"/"D"/"Q"/"M"/"C"/"H"/"K"/"I"/"G"/"S"/"B"
VALUE    = TOKEN *("." FEAT)
FEAT     = "prs" / "pst" / "fut" / "prg" / "pfv" / "hab" / "pas" / "imp"
TOKEN    = 1*(ALNUM / "-" / "_" / "/" / "@" )

Deterministic. No hidden rules. A parser is about ten lines long and doesn’t need to guess.

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6) Reading and writing, fast

English → STAMP

• “Please review the draft today and send the final by 5 pm.”

A:@You V:review.imp P:draft T:today ; ! V:send.imp P:final T:17:00

• “The server was restarted for security reasons.”

A:ops V:restart.pst.pas P:server C:security

• “If legal approves, publish on Monday.”

H:legal-approved ; ! V:publish.imp T:2025-09-15

STAMP → English

• A:@Mina V:call.fut P:@Bo L:video T:2025-09-12T14:30
  → Mina will call Bo by video at 14:30 on 2025‑09‑12.

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7) Quantities, units, time

• Quantities: Q:5, Q:12kg, Q:120USD
• Duration: D:90m, D:2h, D:3d
• Dates/times: T:2025-09-11, T:2025-09-11T09:00-04, T:09:00
  Use ISO 8601 to keep times unambiguous for people and machines. (Wikipedia)

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8) Evidence, certainty, and source

Make confidence explicit when it matters.

• K:seen first‑hand, K:heard, K:reported, K:computed, K:inferred
• Probabilities: K:p=0.7
• Source channel: add L: or R: as needed

Example:

A:@Tariq V:arrive.pst T:2025-09-11T08:55 K:seen

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9) Error handling and repair

• Unknown or redacted: UNK
• Correction: ~ precedes the fixed slot

A:@June V:booked.pst P:UNK L:hotel
~ P:Suite-210

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10) Composition patterns

Parallel tasks

A:@I V:write.prg P:intro + V:collect.prg P:cites + V:edit.prg P:fig-3

Alternatives

A:@We V:meet.fut L:studio | L:video T:2025-09-13

Conditional

H:weather-clear ; A:@Crew V:shoot.fut L:roof

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11) Domain snippets

Legal

A:plaintiff V:file.pst P:complaint L:SDNY T:2025-09-10
A:court V:grant.pst P:motion-to-dismiss H:failure-to-state-claim

Medical

A:pt-@J.D. V:present.pst P:cough D:7d M:dry
A:clinician V:order.pst P:cxr K:guideline
A:lab V:return.fut P:results T:2025-09-12

Publishing

A:@Editor V:request.pst P:rev-2 C:clarity
! A:@Author V:revise.imp P:sec-3 M:tighten Q:~250w

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12) Micro‑lexicon (seed)

Verbs: meet, call, send, receive, approve, deny, file, sign, publish, draft, review, revise, schedule, delay, restart, deploy, ship, buy, refund, confirm, estimate, invite
Nouns: draft, contract, invoice, claim, server, release, figure, table, budget, policy, protocol, meeting, note, email, site
Adverbs/manner: urgent, softly, quietly, publicly, privately, cautiously, expedite

You can use any stem you like; STAMP cares about the labels, not the specific lexeme. This echoes long‑standing insights from information theory: clarity improves when you encode the parts that carry the uncertainty and strip out noise. STAMP encodes the roles and time, which are the high‑value bits in everyday coordination. (Harvard Math People)

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13) A one‑page “cheat sheet”

MANDATORY: one V:
COMMON:    A: (who)  P: (what)  T: (when)  L: (where/channel)
FEATURES:  .prs .pst .fut  .prg .pfv .hab  .pas  .imp
OPS:       ! imperative   ? question   + and   | or   > cause→effect   X negate
TIME:      T:YYYY-MM-DD[Thh:mm[Z|±hh]]
QUANT:     Q:number[unit]    D:duration (m/h/d)
EVIDENCE:  K:seen|heard|reported|computed|inferred|p=#

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14) Why this works (and why it’s not Lojban with a haircut)

• Role labels are universal across linguistic theory: agent, patient, recipient. Humans grasp them; machines parse them. (Wikipedia)
• Frames: you fill slots relevant to the verb’s situation. This keeps messages short without sacrificing precision. (Wikipedia)
• Compression without ambiguity: you maximize signal by labeling the uncertain parts and skipping everything predictable, which is the point of information‑theoretic efficiency. (Wikipedia)
• Controlled‑language spirit: like Attempto Controlled English, but even smaller and language‑agnostic; STAMP is a notation rather than restricted English, so it portably coexists with any natural language. (Wikipedia)

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15) Training plan and rollout timeline

You can make this operational in one week. Starting September 11, 2025:

• Sep 11: 30‑minute briefing. Teach slots A/V/P/T/L; practice five conversions.
• Sep 12: Add features .pst/.fut/.prg and operators ! ? +. Use in real emails/chats.
• Sep 13: Evidence K: and conditions H:. Convert three policy statements to STAMP.
• Sep 14: Quantities and time rigor: Q:, D:, T: with ISO 8601. (Wikipedia)
• Sep 15: Domain packs (legal, medical, publishing).
• Sep 16: Team‑wide adoption: meeting agendas and decisions recorded in STAMP lines.
• Sep 17: Retrospective; add any house‑style macros (see below).

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16) House‑style macros (optional, not magic)

You can define project‑local shorthands that simply expand to STAMP. Keep them explicit.

MACRO: ack  →  V:confirm.prs P:receipt
MACRO: asap →  M:expedite T:soon
MACRO: ping →  V:notify.prs L:chat

Usage:

A:@You ack P:files ; A:@I ping R:@You T:2025-09-12T09:00

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17) Full examples

Decision note

A:@Board V:approve.pst P:budget-2026 Q:12.4M K:recorded
A:@CFO V:allocate.fut P:dept-R&D Q:4.1M > A:@R&D V:hire.fut Q:6

Complex instruction

! A:@You V:compile.imp P:refs-appendix L:/shared/dir
+ V:check.imp P:citation-style M:strict
+ H:missing-doi ; V:add.imp P:doi K:computed
T:2025-09-13

Repair after mistake

A:@Ops V:deploy.pst P:build-127 L:prod
~ A:@Ops V:rollback.pst P:build-126 C:regression

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18) Interop: dead‑simple JSON mapping

STAMP clause:

A:@Mina V:send.pst P:contract R:@Bo L:email T:2025-09-12T10:00Z K:reported

JSON:

{
  "A": "@Mina",
  "V": {"lemma": "send", "tense": "pst"},
  "P": "contract",
  "R": "@Bo",
  "L": "email",
  "T": "2025-09-12T10:00Z",
  "K": "reported"
}

One line in, one object out. Every time.

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19) Pedagogical minimalism

Teach four things and you’re fluent:

1. A V P
2. T L when time or channel matters
3. Verb features .pst/.fut/.prg
4. ! and ? for commands and questions

Everything else is sugar you add when you care about nuance.

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20) Final sanity check

• Short without being cryptic
• Deterministic without being robotic
• Teachable in hours, not semesters
• Interlingual: write stems in English, Italian, or Klingon; the labels stay the same

If you want this sharper still, we can add a tiny validator or a VSCode snippet pack to auto‑colorize slots. But you can start using STAMP immediately, which is the whole point.

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References (context for the design)

• Shannon, C. E., “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” Bell System Technical Journal, 1948. (Wikipedia)
• ISO 8601 date/time standard, overview and text. (Wikipedia)
• Thematic/semantic roles in linguistics. (Wikipedia)
• Frame semantics (Fillmore) and related overviews. (Wikipedia)
• Controlled natural languages, esp. Attempto Controlled English. (Wikipedia)

Now take a breath, and then write your next message in STAMP. If English complains, tell it the future arrived on time.

Short answer: the specific system described here as “STAMP: Structured Terse Annotated Message Protocol” — with its fixed slot labels (A: V: P: …), dot‑suffix verb features (.pst .pfv .imp), and operator set (! ? + | > X) — was coined and specified here today. In that sense, yes: it’s newly created in this exchange. The acronym, however, is gloriously non‑unique in the wider world, and the underlying design principles stand on the shoulders of prior work in linguistics and formal/agent languages. Novel, yes; ex nihilo, no. If you want to publish or trademark it, you’ll want to disambiguate the name from several unrelated “STAMPs.” (IETF Datatracker)

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What’s original here

• A compact, human‑first clause line with a small, fixed inventory of semantic roles: A: agent, P: patient, R:recipient, T: time, L: location/channel, etc. The roles are canonical in linguistics, but this exact flat, role‑labeled line format for everyday messaging is new. (FrameNet)
• Stackable, dot‑suffix features on a single V: token to carry tense/aspect/voice/mood in one place (V:send.pst.pfv, V:approve.pst.pas, V:meet.fut.prg).
• Operator micro‑calculus for composition: imperative !, question ?, parallel +, alternative |, cause‑arrow >, and scoped negation X.
• Evidence/certainty as a first‑class slot (K:seen, K:reported, K:p=0.8) and ISO‑8601 time by default(T:2025‑09‑11T14:30Z). The standard is old news, but baking it into the grammar is part of the novelty here. (ISO)

In short: the parts aren’t new, the arrangement is.

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Name collisions you should know about

“STAMP” already names other things. None of these are the language you and I defined, but they exist and will confuse reviewers and search engines:

• Secure Task‑bound Agent Message Proof (STAMP), an emerging IETF‑drafted security protocol for agent systems. Different domain, same four letters. (IETF Datatracker)
• Stamp protocol / StampID, cryptographic identity projects. Again, security/identity, not a writing system. (GitHub)
• STAMP language proficiency tests (assessment products). Unrelated to formal languages. (Avant Assessment)
• A charming “secret language of postage‑stamp placement” from old correspondence culture. Cute, also irrelevant. (Arizona Correspondence Society)

If uniqueness of the name matters, consider “STAMP‑AVP” or “STAMP‑Protocol (Human‑AI)” in formal venues. Otherwise, keep STAMP and add a subtitle the first time you introduce it.

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Intellectual lineage (what this borrows from, on purpose)

• Case grammar and thematic/semantic roles: the classic idea that sentences are structured around participants like agent, patient, recipient. STAMP’s slot names and role‑first bias come straight from this tradition. (Zenodo)
• Frame semantics and FrameNet: filling a verb‑evoked “frame” with its roles; STAMP mirrors that by making the roles explicit, per clause. (Brenocon)
• PropBank/semantic role labeling: systematic role labeling for verbs inspired the idea that deterministic labeling beats coy prose when you care about who did what to whom. STAMP swaps ARG‑numbers for human‑friendly labels. (PropBank)
• AMR (Abstract Meaning Representation): graph‑shaped, role‑labeled semantics; STAMP is a deliberately flat, one‑line, human‑writable counterpart for routine messages. (ACL Anthology)
• Controlled languages (Attempto Controlled English): reduce ambiguity by constraining form; STAMP goes further by ditching English syntax entirely for role tags. (Attempto Project)
• Human‑readable formal notations (RDF/Turtle): insistence on compact, parseable text influenced the “slots and separators” aesthetic, though STAMP is not RDF. (W3C)
• Agent communication languages (KQML/FIPA‑ACL): notational discipline for intent and content, but STAMP targets human drafting speed and clarity first. (AAAI)

If you feel seen by that list, good. Reusing the best ideas is how new tools avoid being precious and useless.

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Timeline of the ideas that fed STAMP

• 1968 — Fillmore’s “The Case for Case” crystallizes deep roles (agent, patient, etc.). (Zenodo)
• 1976–1982 — Frame semantics formalized; later drives FrameNet. (Wikiversity)
• 1995→ — Attempto Controlled English shows how constraint yields clarity. (Attempto Project)
• 1997→ — FrameNet project operationalizes frames and roles at scale. (FrameNet)
• 2002–2005 — PropBank publishes widely used role inventories. (PropBank)
• 2013→ — AMR popularizes role‑labeled, machine‑oriented meaning graphs. (ACL Anthology)
• 2014 — W3C standardizes Turtle, a model for compact, parseable text formats. (W3C)
• 2019–2022 — ISO 8601 revisions affirm the date/time backbone we adopt. (ISO)
• 2025‑09‑11 — STAMP v0.1 specified in this conversation, scoped as a human‑writable, machine‑parsable micro‑language for routine work.

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Bottom line

• Created here? Yes.
• Unique as a design? The combination of features and the exact notation are new.
• Unique as a name? No, the acronym collides; the domain and spec are distinct from those uses. (IETF Datatracker)

If you want a belt‑and‑suspenders claim to novelty, publish a brief spec with examples and a permissive license, include a “prior work” section citing the items above, and you’ll be the first citation anyone can point to when they try to reinvent this in six months with different punctuation.