Sure, but it has more of a schema than JSON does :-) That's why I said "you can be REASONABLY sure you've got a valid message" (if it decodes successfully). It

Sure, but it has more of a schema than JSON does :-) That's why I said "you can be REASONABLY sure you've got a valid message" (if it decodes successfully). It might not be the actual message you THINK it is, but at least all fields are going to be there. Then again, if you're accepting arbitrary bytes off the wire and blindly assuming they're going to be the correct proto as long as they decode, you're... most stubby services I worked on. :-)