Publishing and Versioning

Universal Manifest is designed to be adopted by external systems. That requires stable, HTTPS-hosted, versioned URLs for core artifacts.

The key principle:

• immutable, versioned artifacts under /ns/universal-manifest/vX.Y/

What must be publicly stable

At minimum, per version:

• JSON-LD context: /ns/universal-manifest/vX.Y/schema.jsonld
• JSON Schema: /ns/universal-manifest/vX.Y/schema.json

Example (v0.1):

• https://universalmanifest.net/ns/universal-manifest/v0.1/schema.jsonld
• https://universalmanifest.net/ns/universal-manifest/v0.1/schema.json

URL layout rules

Immutable versioned paths (required)

Once published, versioned artifacts MUST NOT change in-place.

If a change is needed:

• create a new version folder (e.g. v0.1 → v0.2)
• publish new versioned URLs

Optional latest/ alias (non-normative)

If a latest/ alias exists, it MUST:

• redirect to a concrete version (301/302), and
• MUST NOT serve mutable content directly

Required HTTP headers

Content types

• .jsonld SHOULD be application/ld+json
• .json SHOULD be application/schema+json (or application/json)

CORS

To support browser tooling:

• Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * (or a permissive allowlist)

Caching

For immutable versioned paths:

• Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable

For latest/ redirects:

• short cache (or no-store) so it can change when a new version ships

v0.x versioning policy

During v0.x:

• breaking changes are allowed, but MUST be reflected by a new version folder (v0.1 → v0.2)
• include a short migration note in the newer version docs (when relevant)

Adoption surface beyond schemas

External implementers typically adopt from:

• fixtures (valid + invalid)
• conformance checklists
• well-known names registry (non-normative guidance)

This is why the harness and fixtures are published on this site:

• /harness/fixtures/…

Next

• Release procedure: Publishing → Releasing
• Domain split and responsibilities: Publishing → Domain Split