The Model Already Read the README. MICA v0.1.8 Made It a Protocol

Disclosure: This article was written by the author with AI assistance for editing. All technical content, architecture decisions, and design rationale are the author's own. #ABotWroteThis Glossary: terms used in this article 🔸 MICA (Memory Invocation & Context Archive): A governance schema for AI context management. Defines how context should be structured, trusted, scored, and handed off across sessions. 🔸 Fail-Closed Gate: An admission rule that excludes a context item if it fails a required threshold — regardless of its score on other dimensions. No exceptions. Introduced in v0.1.7. 🔸 README-as-Protocol: The pattern in which an AI session's natural behavior of reading the README first is formalized as the primary invocation mechanism. No installation required. Introduced in v0.1.8. 🔸 Invocation Protocol: The schema-level declaration of how a MICA archive reaches an AI session — and how the session confirms it was loaded. Formalized as a required field in v0.1.8. 🔸 Session R