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Specifications & Contracts

The machine-readable contracts APIs are defined, validated and governed with. 95 in the catalog.

StandardWhat it is
3-D Secure 3-D Secure is an EMVCo messaging protocol that adds cardholder authentication to card-not-present payments, sharing risk data between the merchant,...
ABNF RFC 5234 defines Augmented Backus-Naur Form, the notation the IETF uses to specify the exact syntax of a protocol element. It is the shared grammar...
AI Catalog The AI Catalog Standard is the data model underneath Agentic Resource Discovery — a JSON manifest a publisher hosts at `/.well-known/ai-catalog.jso...
API Blueprint API Blueprint is a Markdown-based specification language for designing and documenting web APIs. It uses a human-readable syntax to describe resour...
API Commons API Commons is a collection of open-source building blocks for API operations. It began as a machine-readable way to define the parts of an API, an...
APIs.json APIs.json is a machine-readable metadata format used to describe APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and their associated resources. It acts ...
AdES The AdES family — PAdES for PDF, XAdES for XML, CAdES for CMS-wrapped data — are the ETSI standards defining how an advanced or qualified electroni...
Agent2Agent The Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol is an open standard for communication and interoperability among independent—often opaque—AI agent systems. Because ...
Agentic Resource Discovery Agentic Resource Discovery (ARD) is a proposed open standard for the discovery layer the agentic web is missing — the step that happens *before* in...
Arazzo The Arazzo Specification is a community-driven, open standard within the OpenAPI Initiative (a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project). It defines ...
AsyncAPI AsyncAPI is an open specification for defining and documenting event-driven and asynchronous APIs in a machine-readable format. It describes messag...
Backstage Software Catalog Format Backstage’s Software Catalog format is a structured, YAML-based specification that describes software components, services, APIs, resources, and th...
Bean Validation Bean Validation is a Java/Jakarta EE specification (JSR 303, JSR 349, and JSR 380) that defines a declarative, annotation-based model for validatin...
Bruno Collection Bruno collections are organized sets of API requests and environments within the Bruno API client, allowing developers to structure, test, and shar...
Bruno Environment A Bruno environment is a set of key–value variables that let you switch configurations—such as URLs, tokens, or credentials—so you can run the same...
CAIP The Chain Agnostic Improvement Proposals define identifiers and conventions that work across blockchains rather than within one — a chain ID format...
CALM CALM (Common Architecture Language Model) is a machine-readable specification for describing software architecture as versioned code. It defines a ...
CKAN Action API CKAN is the open-source data portal software behind a large share of the world's government open-data sites, and its Action API is the uniform JSON...
CLI Agent Spec CLI Agent Spec is a behavioral contract for command-line tools invoked by AI agents rather than humans. It documents 74 failure modes an agent hits...
CSIO CSIO is Canada's insurance data standards body, and the operator of what appears to be the only public, tiered API certification programme in insur...
CWL The Common Workflow Language is a vendor-neutral standard for describing analysis workflows and command-line tools so that they run identically acr...
Certificate Transparency RFC 6962 and its v2 successor RFC 9162 define append-only, publicly auditable Merkle-tree logs of issued TLS certificates. The mechanism matters we...
CloudEvents CloudEvents is a CNCF specification for describing event data in a common, vendor-neutral format. It defines required and optional context attribut...
Collection+JSON Collection+JSON is a JSON-based hypermedia media type for managing and querying collections of resources. It defines a standard document structure ...
DOI A DOI is a persistent identifier for a document or dataset, standardised as ISO 26324 and operated through registration agencies — Crossref for sch...
EIP-1559 EIP-1559 replaced Ethereum's first-price fee auction with a protocol-set base fee that adjusts with demand and is burned, plus an optional priority...
ERC-20 ERC-20 is the Ethereum token standard: a small interface of six functions and two events that any fungible token contract implements. Because every...
ERC-721 ERC-721 is the Ethereum standard for non-fungible tokens — assets that are individually distinguishable rather than interchangeable. It defines own...
FDC3 FDC3 (Financial Desktop Connectivity and Collaboration Consortium) is an open standard for interoperability between financial desktop applications....
FIXM FIXM is the standard data model for exchanging flight information between air traffic management systems, developed jointly by the FAA, EUROCONTROL...
GBFS GBFS is the open data standard for shared mobility — bikes, scooters, mopeds and car share — describing system information, station status and free...
GraphQL A query language for APIs and a runtime for executing those queries with existing data, providing a complete and understandable description of the ...
HAL HAL (Hypertext Application Language) is a media-type specification for representing resources and their links in JSON or XML. It provides a simple,...
HTTP QUERY Method RFC 10008 defines QUERY, an HTTP method that is safe and idempotent like GET but carries a request body like POST. It exists for the operation ever...
I/O Docs I/O Docs was an early machine-readable API description format and interactive documentation framework, released as open source by Mashery in 2011. ...
JAX-WS JAX-WS (Java API for XML Web Services), now Jakarta XML Web Services, is the Java specification for building and consuming SOAP-based web services ...
JPA JPA (Java Persistence API), now standardized as Jakarta Persistence, is the Java specification for object-relational mapping that lets applications...
JSF JSF (JavaServer Faces), now standardized as Jakarta Faces, is a Java specification for building component-based, server-side user interfaces for we...
JSON Pointer RFC 6901 defines a string syntax for identifying one specific value inside a JSON document — a slash-delimited path like /components/schemas/Produc...
JSON Schema JSON Schema enables the confident and reliable use of the JSON data format, bringing consistency, validity, and interoperability to enterprise oper...
JSON-LD JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linking Data) is a W3C standard for expressing linked data in JSON. It adds lightweight semantics to ordina...
JSON:API JSON:API is a specification for building APIs in JSON that standardizes how clients fetch and modify resources, including pagination, filtering, sp...
JSR-303 JSR-303 (Bean Validation) is the Java specification that defines a metadata model and API for declaring and enforcing validation constraints on Jav...
Jakarta EE Jakarta EE is the open-source, vendor-neutral set of specifications for building enterprise Java applications, stewarded by the Eclipse Foundation ...
Java EE Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition), formerly J2EE, is Oracle's set of specifications for building large-scale, multi-tier enterprise Java ...
MDS MDS is the data standard cities use to regulate shared micromobility, developed by the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and now governed by...
Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) The Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) is an open specification that finally gives HTTP's long-reserved `402 Payment Required` status code a defined s...
Microcks Examples APIExamples is Microcks' own specification format for defining reusable request/response examples that drive Microcks mocks and contract tests, ind...
Model Context Protocol (MCP) MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to large language models (LLMs). It offers a co...
NAICS NAICS is the North American Industry Classification System — the six-digit code set that the United States, Canada and Mexico use to say what a bus...
Nextflow Nextflow is a workflow language and runtime for data-driven computational pipelines, created in 2013 at the Centre for Genomic Regulation and now d...
OAuth 2.0 Protected Resource Metadata RFC 9728 is the Standards Track specification that lets an API describe how it is protected, in a JSON document served at `/.well-known/oauth-prote...
OCI OCI (Open Container Initiative) is an open governance project under the Linux Foundation that defines vendor-neutral specifications for container i...
OCI Distribution Specification The OCI Distribution Specification defines the HTTP API a container registry exposes for pushing, pulling and discovering artifacts, including the ...
OCI Image Specification The OCI Image Specification defines the container image format — the manifest, the image configuration, the filesystem layers and the descriptors t...
OCI Runtime Specification The OCI Runtime Specification defines the configuration, execution environment and lifecycle of a container — what a runtime is handed and what ope...
OData OData (Open Data Protocol) is an OASIS and ISO/IEC-approved standard for building and consuming RESTful APIs, defining consistent conventions for q...
OMOP CDM The Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership Common Data Model is a standardized relational schema and vocabulary for observational health data, ...
Open Collections A modern, developer-first specification pioneered by Bruno for defining and sharing API collections. Designed for simplicity and collaboration.
Open Graph Protocol The Open Graph Protocol is a set of metadata tags that let any web page describe itself as a rich object — title, type, image, description, canonic...
OpenAPI OpenAPI (formerly known as Swagger) is a specification for building, documenting, and consuming RESTful APIs. It defines a standard, language-agnos...
OpenAPI Overlays The Overlay Specification is an auxiliary standard that complements the OpenAPI Specification. An OpenAPI description defines API operations, data ...
OpenCLI Specification OpenCLI Specification is a YAML/JSON document format for describing a command-line interface the way OpenAPI describes an HTTP API — a versioned `o...
OpenPredicate (formerly JSON Query Language) JSON Query Language is a JSON-encoded, SQL-flavoured predicate language for the request body of search operations, described entirely by a single J...
OpenRTB OpenRTB is the IAB Tech Lab specification for real-time bidding — the message format and protocol by which an ad exchange asks demand-side platform...
OpenUSD OpenUSD (Universal Scene Description) is the scene-composition framework originating at Pixar and now governed by the Alliance for OpenUSD, definin...
OpenXR OpenXR is the Khronos Group's royalty-free API standard for virtual and augmented reality, providing a common interface between applications and XR...
Phenopackets Phenopackets is a GA4GH schema for exchanging phenotypic and clinical descriptions of an individual alongside genomic findings, standardized as ISO...
Postman Collections A Postman Collection is a portable JSON artifacts that organizes one or more API requests—plus their params, headers, auth, scripts, and examples—s...
Postman Environments Postman environments are collections of variables that let you easily switch between different configurations (like development, staging, and produ...
Problem Details for HTTP APIs Problem Details for HTTP APIs, defined in RFC 7807 (now obsoleted by RFC 9457), is a standardized machine-readable format for carrying error detail...
RAML RAML (RESTful API Modeling Language) is a YAML-based specification for describing RESTful APIs in a structured, reusable format. It emphasizes patt...
RCS Rich Communication Services is the GSMA's successor to SMS — an operator-standardised messaging protocol supporting rich media, read receipts, typi...
RDF RDF (Resource Description Framework) is a W3C standard data model for describing resources as subject-predicate-object triples, providing a common,...
STAC STAC is a specification for describing geospatial assets — satellite imagery, aerial photography, derived data products — so they can be discovered...
Schema.org Schema.org is a collaborative, community-driven vocabulary (launched in 2011 by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Yandex) that defines shared types an...
Siren Siren is a hypermedia specification for representing entities in JSON, including their properties, actions, and links. It enables clients to discov...
Sparkplug Sparkplug is an Eclipse Foundation specification that defines topic namespace, payload structure and state management on top of MQTT, so that indus...
Specification In the API world a specification is a machine-readable document that formally describes how an API behaves — its endpoints, operations, schemas, an...
Spectral Spectral is a flexible, open-source tool designed for linting and validating API specifications such as OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema files. I...
Standard Webhooks Standard Webhooks is a set of open source tools and guidelines to send webhooks easily, securely and reliably. Webhooks are becoming increasingly p...
Swagger An open-source framework for designing, building, documenting, and consuming RESTful web services. Swagger provides a specification (OpenAPI) and t...
Turbo EA Reference Catalog The Turbo EA Reference Catalog is an open, MIT-licensed reference model for business architecture, covering three orthogonal artefacts — business c...
VAST VAST — the Video Ad Serving Template — is the IAB Tech Lab XML specification that tells a video player what ad to play, where to fetch it, and whic...
Vacuum RuleSets are how to configure vacuum to know which rules to run for each specification, and how it should evaluate those rules, and a RuleSet is a ...
W3C Web of Things The W3C Web of Things is a set of standards for describing IoT devices as web resources. Its central artifact, the Thing Description, is a JSON-LD ...
WADL WADL (Web Application Description Language) is an XML-based specification for describing HTTP-based web applications and RESTful services. It model...
WDL WDL is a human-readable workflow language that originated at the Broad Institute for genome analysis pipelines and is now governed by the OpenWDL c...
WSDL WSDL (Web Services Description Language) is an XML-based format for describing the operations, messages, bindings, and endpoints of a SOAP web serv...
Web Standards Web standards are the specifications and guidelines — largely from the W3C, WHATWG, and IETF — that define how core web technologies like HTML, CSS...
XBRL XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is the XML-based standard for machine-readable business and financial reporting, used by securities r...
glTF glTF is the Khronos Group's royalty-free specification for transmitting and loading 3D scenes and models, often described as "the JPEG of 3D". It d...
oEmbed oEmbed is a simple format allowing a site to display embedded content from another site without parsing its markup — a consumer requests a URL agai...
x402 x402 is an open payments protocol that uses HTTP's `402 Payment Required` status code to let a client pay for a resource in the course of requestin...
xDS xDS is the family of discovery APIs that Envoy and other data planes use to receive their configuration dynamically. It defines Protobuf services f...
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