zap-http

Docs: HTTP over ZAP · part of the ZAP Protocol

HTTP request/response semantics over the ZAP transport.

zap-proto.io · Spec · Paper · Discord

Drop-in replacement for net/http server and client when both peers live in a trusted boundary (in-cluster service mesh, agent-to-tool, edge-to-edge). Existing handlers and http.Client code work unchanged — only the wire underneath changes.

Why

Property	net/http over TCP+TLS	zap-http
Confidentiality	TLS (classical curves)	X-Wing hybrid PQ (X25519 + ML-KEM-768)
Authentication	bearer / JWT at app layer	KEM keypair at transport layer
Wire encoding	text headers + chunked body	ZAP wire, zero-copy
Field access	parse → allocate → copy	pointer offset, O(1)
JWT mint per call	typical	not in the path

Install

go get github.com/zap-proto/http

Requires Go 1.23+.

Server

package main

import (
    "io"
    "net/http"

    zaphttp "github.com/zap-proto/http"
)

func main() {
    http.HandleFunc("/healthz", func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        io.WriteString(w, "ok")
    })
    if err := zaphttp.ListenAndServe(":9999", nil); err != nil {
        panic(err)
    }
}

Same http.Handler, same http.HandleFunc, same default mux. The wire is ZAP-HTTP.

Client

package main

import (
    "io"
    "net/http"
    "os"

    zaphttp "github.com/zap-proto/http"
)

func main() {
    client := &http.Client{Transport: zaphttp.NewTransport("server:9999")}
    resp, err := client.Get("http://server/healthz")
    if err != nil { panic(err) }
    defer resp.Body.Close()
    io.Copy(os.Stdout, resp.Body)
}

http.Client machinery — timeouts, redirects, cookies — keeps working unchanged.

Wire format

Each HTTP message is one ZAP frame, defined in schema/zap_http.zap using the ZAP schema language. Today the wire layer is length-prefixed framing over TCP; the paper and the v0.2 release will swap that for the full ZAP transport with X-Wing PQ KEM handshake on connect.

zap-http v0.1 wire (transitional):
  +---------+-------------------+
  | u32 BE  |   ZAP Frame       |
  | length  |   (zap_http.zap)  |
  +---------+-------------------+

zap-http v0.2 wire:
  +-----------------------------+--------+-----------+
  | ZAP transport (X-Wing KEM,  | AEAD   | ZAP Frame |
  | mutual auth, multi-stream)  | header |           |
  +-----------------------------+--------+-----------+

The .zap schema is the source of truth for what's on the wire. Marshal/unmarshal in any language follows from the schema; bindings:

• Go (this repo)
• Rust — zap-proto/rust (consumer; sub-protocol bindings TBD)
• TypeScript — zap-proto/ts (planned)

What's in v0.1

Feature	Status
Request method, target, headers, body	✓
Response status, reason, headers, body	✓
Multi-value headers preserved	✓
Trailers (read & write)	✓
http.Client / http.Handler compatibility	✓
Length-prefixed framing over TCP	✓
64 MiB max frame size (configurable)	✓
Streaming bodies (chunked-style)	v0.2
Connection pool / keep-alive on client	v0.2
Real ZAP transport (PQ KEM handshake)	v0.2
WebSocket-style upgrade	see zap-proto/ws

Sub-protocol family

• zap-http — this repo
• zap-ws — multi-stream pubsub, per-stream FEC
• zap-fix — FIX 4.4/5.0 trading channel
• zap-rns — KEM-bound service naming
• zap-mcp — Model Context Protocol over ZAP
• zap-acp — Agent Communication Protocol
• zap-a2a — Google Agent2Agent over ZAP

By the composability theorem, every sub-protocol that embeds onto ZAP-base inherits its post-quantum confidentiality and mutual authentication automatically.

Schema regeneration

make schema    # regenerates internal/wire/zap_http.go from schema/zap_http.zap

Requires zapc (the ZAP schema compiler) on PATH. Build it once from zap-proto/spec:

cargo install --path .   # from a clone of zap-proto/spec

License

MIT OR Apache-2.0