daide

DAIDE, short for Diplomacy Aide-de-Jeu, is a standardized, text-based protocol used for electronic communication in the board game Diplomacy. It emerged within the online Diplomacy community to provide a consistent, machine-readable means of exchanging orders, negotiations, and game-state updates across asynchronous channels such as email, forums, and chat clients.

The protocol defines a compact message format that includes a header with game identity and turn number, sender and recipient identifiers, and a payload that encodes moves, supports, retreats, or status messages. The design emphasizes readability for humans and ease of parsing for software tools, enabling both players and bots to participate.

DAIDE-enabled clients and bots can generate, validate, and interpret messages, facilitating automated play, tournament handling, and large-scale analyses. Because the protocol is open and text-based, it can be implemented without special infrastructure, allowing participation from a broad range of platforms.

DAIDE is maintained by an active community of Diplomacy players, with the principal specification and resources hosted on the DAIDE website (daide.net). Over time, many extensions and variants have arisen to improve reliability, security, and interoperability across different game servers and interfaces.