Governance
dotStandards is a cooperative initiative. Each standard is governed by the organization best suited to maintain it, with shared principles and conventions maintained collectively.
Who governs what
| Standard | Governing body | Scope |
|---|---|---|
.agents |
secondtruthLabs | User-level identity and knowledge data |
.forge |
Open WebTech Association (OWTA) | Project-level configuration and automation |
| Shared conventions | Both | Cross-cutting rules (naming, formats, extensibility) |
How standards evolve
- Draft. A new standard starts as a draft specification, published with a
v0.xversion number. Drafts are open for feedback and may change significantly. - Review. Once a draft stabilizes, it enters review. Feedback is collected from implementers and the broader community.
- Stable. After review, the standard is published as
v1.0. Breaking changes after this point require a new major version.
Proposing a new standard
New dotStandards can be proposed by anyone. A proposal should include:
- Problem statement. What gap does this standard fill?
- Scope. What does the directory convention cover? What does it explicitly not cover?
- Directory layout. The proposed canonical tree.
- Governing body. Who will maintain the standard going forward?
- Relationship to existing standards. How does it interact with
.agents,.forge, and the shared conventions?
Proposals are discussed in the dotStandards GitHub repository.
Licensing
All dotStandards specifications are licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted. This means anyone can use, adapt, and redistribute the specifications as long as attribution is provided and derivative works use the same license.
Contributing
Contributions to existing standards — corrections, clarifications, and improvements — are welcome via pull requests to the relevant specification repository. For significant changes, open an issue first to discuss the proposed modification.