Releasing

Releases are designed for external adoption. The priorities are:

• immutable versioned artifacts
• stable URLs for contexts and schemas
• clear conformance expectations (fixtures + checklist)

This page is the public release procedure for the standard.

When to cut a new version

Create a new spec/vX.Y/ version when:

• required fields or semantics change
• well-known registry guidance changes meaningfully
• signature/canonicalization expectations change

If changes are purely additive (new optional fields, fixtures, docs), you may stay within the same spec version — but avoid editing already-published artifacts if they are publicly hosted.

Release checklist (high level)

1. Ensure a new spec version folder exists (README + schemas + context).
2. Update identifiers inside artifacts (namespace URLs, $id in schema).
3. Update conformance and fixtures (valid + invalid).
4. Run proof (journeys) and capture artifacts as evidence.
5. Publish updated docs site output to universalmanifest.net.
6. Validate production endpoints (docs + resolver) via smoke checks.

Publishing checks (standards site)

After publishing to universalmanifest.net, verify:

• spec artifact URLs resolve (200)
• correct Content-Type headers for .jsonld and .json
• CORS allows tooling
• versioned paths are immutable-cacheable

Deployment runbooks

These pages are designed to be runnable and copy/paste friendly:

• Deploy checklist: /publishing/deploy-checklist/
• Production smoke: /publishing/production-smoke/
• Deploy landing: /publishing/deploy/

Compatibility rule

Once a public URL is published and adopters depend on it:

• do not remove it
• do not repoint it to different content

Next

• Run production smoke after deploy: /publishing/production-smoke/