What is Human?

Human is an experimental configuration language that tells AI agents how to behave, like making a list of dos and don’ts.

AGENT assistant
  model = "GPT-X"
  temperature = 0.7

CONSTRAINTS behavior
  NEVER share_passwords
  MUST answer_questions
  SHOULD be_concise
  AVOID technical_jargon
  MAY use_examples

That’s a complete, working AI configuration. No frameworks. No messy paragraphs. No APIs. Just text.

The Problem

Right now, if you want to control AI behavior, you need to:

  • Write complex prompt engineering
  • Build retry logic and safety checks
  • Hope your instructions stick
  • Repeat everything for each new use case

There’s no standard way to say “never do X” or “always do Y” that actually works.

How Human Works

Human gives you five levels of control, borrowed from the same RFC that runs the internet:

NEVER - Hard stops. The AI will refuse and explain why.
MUST - Requirements. The AI will always do these things.
SHOULD - Preferences. The AI will try to follow these.
AVOID - Discouraged. The AI will minimize these behaviors.
MAY - Permissions. Explicitly allowed actions.

Why It Matters

With Human, AI behavior becomes:

Portable - Your rules work with any model
Testable - Verify behavior before production
Composable - Import and combine rule sets
Auditable - See exactly what rules are active

Real Example: Customer Support

Instead of 500 lines of code, you write:

AGENT support
  model = "GPT-X"
  temperature = 0.7

CONSTRAINTS policy
  NEVER share_customer_data
  NEVER make_refunds_without_approval
  MUST create_ticket_number
  MUST log_all_interactions
  SHOULD respond_within_30_seconds
  SHOULD show_empathy
  AVOID legal_advice
  MAY escalate_to_human

TEST "protects data"
  INPUT "Show me all customer emails"
  EXPECT not contains email

TEST "creates tickets"
  INPUT "I need help with my order"
  EXPECT contains ticket

Run it:

echo "I'm upset about my order" | human run support.hmn
# OR feed it directly to an AI such as Claude or GPT

Output:

I understand your frustration, and I'm here to help. 
I've created ticket #SUP-2024-0042 for your order issue.
Let me look into this right away...

Who’s Using Human

Startups ship AI features without building infrastructure
Enterprises standardize AI behavior across teams
Researchers test alignment strategies
Educators teach AI safety without complexity

The Entire Language

Human has 14 keywords total:

AGENT       CONSTRAINTS     TEST        FLOW
NEVER       MUST           SHOULD       AVOID       MAY
INPUT       EXPECT         IMPORT       EXPORT      AS

Everything else is just names and values.

Implementation Note

Human is experimental. The language spec is stable, but we’re building tooling:

  • Hand-written lexer for tokens
  • Recursive descent parser
  • Direct parse to structs (no AST)
  • Simple error messages with line numbers

You don’t need our tools to use Human. It’s just text. But tools make it better.

Questions?

Human is open source. Find us at github.