daides

DAIDE, short for Diplomacy Aide Memoire, is a protocol and ecosystem used by players of the board game Diplomacy to exchange messages electronically in a standardized form. It aims to standardize communication so that players, software clients, and automated agents can exchange orders, negotiations, and status updates with minimal ambiguity, enabling asynchronous, cross-border play.

Messages in DAIDE are structured with a type and fields such as game identifier, sender and recipient, turn or season, and a content payload. The content uses a compact set of abbreviations and formatting rules to describe moves, orders, and negotiations. A DAIDE message is designed to be both human-readable and machine-parseable, allowing direct reading as well as automated processing by software tools.

The DAIDE community maintains documentation and reference implementations to support interoperability. There are DAIDE servers and client programs that route messages between players, and parsing libraries exist for multiple programming languages. Software tools can log conversations, validate message syntax, and assist with turn management. The protocol is designed to be extensible to accommodate variants and different play styles while keeping core semantics stable.

Impact and use of DAIDE are strongest within online Diplomacy circles that run correspondence games and tournaments. By providing a common lingua franca across sites and chat platforms, DAIDE helps reduce miscommunication and enables automation for move verification, game-state tracking, and archival logging.