> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.internetobject.org/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.internetobject.org/internet-object/manifesto.md).

# Manifesto

Data is the substance of the Internet, and we still move it wastefully.

JSON proved that humans must be able to read their data — and then it stayed wasteful, lossy, and schemaless by default. The binary formats proved that the wire must be small — and then they made data unreadable and forked their schemas into a separate toolchain. Both were half-right. We accepted the choice between them for twenty years. We don't have to anymore.

Internet Object begins from a refusal: **we will not choose between readable and efficient, between expressive and exact, between human and machine.** A format for the Internet must serve all of them, at the scale the Internet actually runs.

These are the convictions it is built on.

**1. The wire is not free.** A format used everywhere, constantly, has no right to be wasteful. Every key repeated on every record is bytes paid for again and again — in storage, in bandwidth, in energy, in latency. We declare structure once and never repeat it.

**2. Structure is not data.** Keys, types, and constraints belong to the schema. A record carries only its values. Conflating the two was the inherited mistake; separating them is what makes data compact, validated, and self-describing all at once.

**3. The model is the contract, not the bytes.** A schema and its data are one truth, validated one way. Whether that truth is serialized as human-readable text or as a compact binary form, it means the same thing and validates the same way. The encoding is a choice; the meaning never changes.

**4. Data must tell the truth.** A `decimal` is exact. A `bigint` is whole. A date is a date, and binary is binary. No silent coercion, no precision lost in transit. Where other formats shrug, Internet Object is precise.

**5. Meaning belongs in the format.** Validation is not a second language in a second file. The shape of data — its types, its constraints — is declared with the data, in the same syntax as the data, and enforced as a property of the format itself.

**6. The Internet is a stream, not a file.** Data arrives over time, in volume, between parties who often already agree on its shape. Documents, collections, and streaming are first-class — not features bolted onto a format that assumed everything fits in memory at once.

**7. Open to all. Locked to none.** Internet Object is an openly specified contract on the wire, not a library in a language or a product from a vendor. Anyone can implement it; no one can lock you into it. Data you store today will still be understood long after the tools that wrote it are gone.

***

Internet Object is a promise: that data can be readable *and* small, expressive *and* validated, precise *and* fast — bound to no language and no vendor.

Not a better library. **A better default.**

## See Also

* [Abstract](/internet-object/abstract.md) — the technical statement of what Internet Object is
* [The Poetic Principles](/internet-object/the-zen-of-internet-object.md) — the same values in verse
* [Objectives](/internet-object/objectives.md) — the concrete goals the format is designed to meet
* [Why Internet Object?](/internet-object/why-internet-object.md) — how it compares to JSON, CSV, and YAML


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