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Universal Manifest

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What it is

Section titled “What it is”

Universal Manifest (UM) is a portable document format for sharing identity, credentials, and preferences between systems. Think of it as a Swiss Army Knife for personal data: one compact, standardized package that carries everything a receiving system needs to know about a person, device, or organization — without requiring that system to build a custom integration for every data source it talks to.

The problem it solves

Section titled “The problem it solves”

Today, every pair of systems that needs to exchange information about a user invents its own format. Your social profile, your login credentials, your device registrations, your privacy preferences — they all live in different shapes, in different places, with no common structure. The result is a mess of one-off integrations, duplicated data, and fragile connections that break whenever one side changes. Worse, your privacy preferences from one system are invisible to the next, so consent decisions don’t travel with you.

How it works

Section titled “How it works”

A Universal Manifest is a JSON-LD document with a simple structure. At its core, it says: here’s who this is about (the subject, identified by a DID or URI), here’s when this information is valid (issued and expiry timestamps), and here’s what you need to know (organized into sections).

Those sections work like the tools on a Swiss Army Knife. Shards are fold-out compartments, each carrying a specific slice of data — a public profile, a device registration, a venue policy. Pointers are like business cards with URLs: instead of copying someone’s entire profile into the manifest, you include a link to where that data lives authoritatively. Consents are the locks on each compartment — they follow a default-deny model, meaning nothing is shared unless the user has explicitly said “yes.”

Every manifest has a built-in expiry date. Systems that receive a manifest must check the validity window and reject it once it’s expired. This makes UM safe for local-first, offline-tolerant environments: you can cache a manifest on a device with limited connectivity and trust that it will stop being valid on its own, without needing a revocation check.

Who it’s for

Section titled “Who it’s for”

UM is designed for three audiences. Developers get a well-specified format with JSON Schema validation, a TypeScript helper library, and runnable code examples. Businesses get a standard that reduces integration cost and carries privacy consent natively. Individuals get a format that puts them in control — their manifest, their permissions, their data.

What it enables

Section titled “What it enables”
  • A freelance artist’s portfolio, credentials, and display preferences traveling with them to any venue or gallery
  • A smart-glasses AR layer that respects bystanders’ recording-consent preferences in real time
  • A proof-of-personhood credential that works across multiple verification providers
  • Portable user profiles that move between social platforms without re-entering data
  • Offline device enrollment at edge locations with no internet connectivity
  • Cross-platform gaming profiles that carry achievements and identity between worlds

Where to start

Section titled “Where to start”