i noticed the same, so in the README, I describe `cord` as a protocol:

``` This repo is one implementation of the Cord protocol. The protocol itself — five primitives, dependency resolution, authority scoping, two-phase lifecycle — is independent of the backing store, transport, and agent runtime. You could implement Cord with Redis pub/sub, Postgres for multi-machine coordination, HTTP/SSE instead of stdio MCP, or non-Claude agents. See RFC.md for the full protocol specification. ```