Full Specification

The AI Catalog specification is published as a W3C-style normative document.

View the full specification

What's in the specification

The specification covers:

• Core schema — formal definitions for AI Catalog, Catalog Entry, Host Info, Publisher, and all fields
• Trust Manifest — identity binding, attestations, provenance links, signing, and verification procedures
• Discovery — well-known URI, link relation headers, and agent-driven discovery
• Conformance levels — normative requirements for Minimal, Discoverable, and Trusted catalogs
• Version handling — compatibility rules for producers and consumers
• Security considerations — trust layers, catalog poisoning, typosquatting, embedded content safety
• CDDL schema — formal machine-readable schema

Relationship to these docs

The developer documentation you're reading now is a practical guide aimed at getting you productive quickly. It draws from the specification but is not normative.

Informative ecosystem and distribution mappings are maintained separately in the Mappings section.

When building a production implementation, refer to the specification for precise requirements — especially for Trust Manifest verification, signature algorithms, and conformance obligations.