agenticweb.wiki

Open Knowledge Format OKF

Read The Open Knowledge Format (OKF) is a Google-originated specification for representing organizational knowledge — table schemas, metric definitions, playbooks, API references — as a directory of plain markdown files with YAML frontmatter [1][2]. Each unit of knowledge (a "concept") is one markdown file; the only required field is type, everything else (title, description, tags, and an open-ended set of trust/provenance/lifecycle fields) is optional, and unknown fields or types must be tolerated by any conformant consumer [1]. Concepts cross-link with ordinary markdown links, so a bundle forms a graph, not just a directory tree.

Overview

It solves the problem of fragmented, non-portable "tribal knowledge" that today lives in metadata catalogs, wikis, code comments, and senior engineers' heads, and that every organization and every catalog vendor re-solves from scratch with incompatible schemas and SDKs [2]. Because a bundle is just files, it is git-diffable, requires no proprietary API to read or write, and formalizes an already-emerging pattern (the "LLM-wiki": Obsidian vaults, AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md files, ad hoc index.md/log.md conventions) rather than inventing a new one [2]. v0.2, the current version, adds first-class provenance (sources, with per-source credibility signals like usage_count and last_modified), trust tiers derived from verified events, lifecycle fields (status, stale_after), and a dedicated "Attested Computation" concept type that lets a value's sanctioned computation be checked against what actually ran [1].

What it does not do: define a fixed taxonomy of concept types, prescribe any storage/serving/query infrastructure, replace domain-specific schemas such as Avro or OpenAPI (it references them, not subsumes them), or specify a packaging/invocation standard for the code an executor or attester points at [1]. It also has no discovery mechanism of its own — there is no well-known path or fixed convention for finding a bundle at a web origin; a bundle's location is whatever the producer chooses (a git repo URL, a tarball, a subdirectory).

Current state, as of this verification (September 2026): OKF v0.1 was announced 2026-06-12 and v0.2 followed by August 2026, when the project also moved out of the GoogleCloudPlatform/knowledge-catalog monorepo into its own dedicated repository, GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format; the old location now carries only a frozen, explicitly unmaintained snapshot [3]. The dedicated repo, created 2026-08-11, had 288 GitHub stars and 11 forks as of 2026-09-05 [4]. All shipped tooling — the reference enrichment agent (BigQuery-to-OKF) and the static HTML graph visualizer — is explicitly described by Google as a "proof of concept," and the only public examples of conformant bundles are the sample datasets Google itself produced (GA4, Stack Overflow, Bitcoin, and a fourth 'Acme Retail' sample added after the initial announcement) [1][3].

What is disputed or unknown: no adoption beyond Google's own samples and Google Cloud's Knowledge Catalog integration was found; there is no independent producer or consumer implementation, no third-party adoption count, and no evidence yet of OKF being used to back a production agent system outside Google. "OKF" also collides with the pre-existing Open Knowledge Foundation (okfn.org), an unrelated nonprofit; care is needed to distinguish the two in any listing.

Discovery and probe

none — a bundle is a directory of markdown files distributed as a git repository, tarball/zip, or subdirectory of a larger repo; there is no fixed web-origin path or well-known convention for locating one · none

N/A none — bundle location is producer-defined (git repo URL, tarball, or subdirectory path); not servable via a fixed {origin} convention
parse:     Every non-reserved `.md` file in the tree has a parseable YAML frontmatter block containing a non-empty `type` field (OKF §11 conformance); an optional root `index.md` may declare `okf_version`
on absent: No conformant OKF bundle at the given location; this says nothing about whether the org has other, non-OKF internal documentation

Not probed live: no-fixed-path. OKF bundles live wherever the producer publishes them; there is no origin path.

History

Instances

Every instance with its source is listed on the instances page.

See also

References

  1. Full OKF v0.2 specification: bundle structure, concept documents and frontmatter, provenance/trust/lifecycle fields (`sources`, `generated`, `verified`, `status`, `stale_after`), cross-linking, actor convention, index/log files, Attested Computation concepts, conformance rules (only `type` is required; consumers must not reject unknown fields/types/broken links), and versioning policy — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format/main/SPEC.md (2026-08) VERIFIED
  2. Google Cloud announced OKF v0.1 on 2026-06-12: a directory of markdown files with YAML frontmatter, requiring no SDK or new runtime; shipped with a reference enrichment agent, a static HTML visualizer, and three sample bundles (GA4, Stack Overflow, Bitcoin) explicitly described as 'proofs of concept' — https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/data-analytics/how-the-open-knowledge-format-can-improve-data-sharing (2026-06-12) VERIFIED
  3. The OKF specification and reference implementation moved out of GoogleCloudPlatform/knowledge-catalog into its own dedicated repository, GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format; the old location is marked a frozen, unmaintained snapshot with an explicit notice to stop using it — https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/knowledge-catalog/main/okf/README.md (2026-08) VERIFIED
  4. The dedicated open-knowledge-format GitHub repository was created 2026-08-11 and had 288 stargazers and 11 forks as of this verification — https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/open-knowledge-format (2026-09-05) VERIFIED

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