Names and marks
XTXP has a small vocabulary, and each word names one part of the design. This page says how to write them, so the spec, the code and anything said about the project stay consistent.
The words
Section titled “The words”| Word | Names | Write it |
|---|---|---|
| XTXP | The protocol: XML to XML Protocol, node to node | All capitals in prose. xtxp in code, package names and the xtxp:// scheme. |
| xtxp.link | The spec site, and later a muppet disco | Always lowercase, as a domain. |
| Xmesh | The engine: the XML tree CRDT, a pure Rust layer on Yrs | Capital X, lowercase mesh. xmesh in code. |
| muppet | The executor and application layer: Multi User Progressive Patch Execution Tree. Client-side Xmesh, and, run headless, a session host | Always lowercase, as plain text, like session and bouncer. Capitalised only to start a sentence, like any word. Never MUPPET. |
| session | A line of a document’s history, from one user’s scratch state to @main |
Lowercase, an ordinary word. |
| muppet disco | Discovery: finding the muppets that host a session. A future milestone | Lowercase. |
| bouncer | A domain owner’s control of its @origin at a disco |
Lowercase, an ordinary word. |
Muppet is written as an ordinary lowercase word, not a name. That’s deliberate: see the muppet advisory below.
Code style is kept for things you’d type, such as xtxp://, @main and file names, so a word in code style always means a literal.
Name checks
Section titled “Name checks”| Name | Clash found | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| XTXP | None found | Public name of the protocol and the project. |
| Xmesh | Thinkbox XMesh, a commercial mesh-caching plugin for VFX tools | Fine as the engine’s name inside the spec. A public-facing engine name is still open. |
| muppet | The Muppets, a Henson/Disney trademark | Kept as a lowercase word for a part of the protocol. See below. |
The muppet advisory
Section titled “The muppet advisory”Recorded 18 October 2026. This is a summary of an informal review, not legal advice. Before any commercial launch, run a proper clearance search with an IP attorney.
What was asked
Section titled “What was asked”Would Disney act against muppet on xtxp.link? An AI search summary was asked, then its answer was reviewed.
What the summary said
Section titled “What the summary said”- Risk is high where the word is used commercially, could make users think Disney or the Muppets are involved, or sits next to content that could tarnish a family brand.
- Risk is middling for free software or open-source tools carrying the name, because software is a field the owner could plausibly license into.
- Risk is low for internal codenames that users never see, and for genuine commentary about the characters.
- Given that muppet is an acronym for a technical mechanism inside a protocol, the risk was judged very low, on conditions:
- no puppet, frog or felt imagery anywhere near it;
- lowercase or stylised in docs and code, with the expansion given where it’s introduced;
- never the product’s main name or part of the domain.
- Its rule of thumb: a large rights holder can make a small project spend heavily on defence even when the project is in the right.
What the review added
Section titled “What the review added”- Confusion isn’t the only test. A famous mark can also be protected against dilution, without anyone being confused. South Africa’s Trade Marks Act (section 34(1)(c)) has such a provision, as do US and EU law. “A different industry” isn’t a complete answer.
- The backronym helps, but isn’t a shield. It shows good faith. What counts is how the word is actually presented to people.
- The claim about crawlers filing takedowns on sight of frog imagery is unsupported. Keep the guidance (no puppet imagery), drop the certainty.
- Muppet is more public than an internal codename. In this design people run, host and talk about muppets, which makes it closer to a product word in software.
- “muppet disco” is the riskiest phrase. It’s playful and character-flavoured, which reads more like a nod to the brand than a technical acronym.
- Renaming gets more expensive with time. Today a rename is a find-and-replace. Once federated nodes run other people’s muppets, it’s a migration of a protocol nobody fully controls.
The decision
Section titled “The decision”- Muppet stays, lowercase, as plain text. It’s spelled out as Multi User Progressive Patch Execution Tree where it’s introduced, capitalised only to start a sentence, and never written
MUPPET. That meets the advisory’s main condition and keeps it alongside session and bouncer as an ordinary word of the protocol, not a brand. (It was briefly set as code; that was dropped, because code style here means a literal you’d type.) - XTXP is the public name. muppet never becomes the name of the product, an app-store listing or a domain.
- No puppet imagery. The brand is the XTXP logo: black, white and one red. Nothing felt, furry, frog-like or puppet-like goes near muppet, in the UI, the logo, the docs or talks.
- Revisit before anything commercial, before a downloadable client ships under its own name, and before the muppet disco goes live. Each of those raises the stakes, the disco most of all. A clearance search (CIPC in South Africa, USPTO in the US) for the word in software classes is the first step then.