Revision 33 is a retained revision. It stays published at this address so hash-pinned references keep resolving, but it is no longer the working draft — revision 35 is.
Read this document in revision 35 →Revision 35·All revisions
Specification
The TSON specification, split into two parts, plus the companion documents developed alongside it. Spot an error, or have a comment on the specification? Open an issue on GitHub.
TSON Specification
- TSON Part 1: Text Data Format
The notation and reference encoding of the TSON schema system: the lexer, structural grammar, absent sentinel, augmentation syntax (annotations, type annotations, directives), and base type resolution — everything needed to losslessly read and write schemaless TSON data.
- TSON Part 2: Type System and Schema
The centre of the TSON series: the schema grammar, the type system and its operations, the schema chain and its resolution model, schema compilation and resolver output, the text encoding rules, and the operations of the schema, meta, and import directives.
- TSON Developer Guide
Rationale, extended examples, and implementation guidance for the TSON specification series. Nothing in this guide is normative; where it appears to disagree with [TSON-DATA] or [TSON-SCHEMA], the specifications govern.
Schema Source Files
The normative TSON schema source files in .tnformat, each followed in parentheses by its non-normative resolved-output fixture. To check an implementation: parse the source, run the resolver, canonicalise, and compare against the fixture.
Reports
The working documents belonging to this revision: the change log of what was accepted into it, and the non-normative reports written against it, which record findings and design directions under consideration rather than committed specification.
- TSON 2026 Revision 33 — Change Log
Adjudicated and executed 2026-08-25 — Part 1, Part 2, all six companion artifacts, and the Developer Guide updated; hash pins remain placeholders until publication
- SPEC-FEEDBACK.md (59 entries, against Revision 32)
- tson-cr-structure-templates.md (CR-structure-templates, Proposed against Revision 32)
- Revised companion artifacts: meta-kernel.tn, meta.tn, core.tn and resolved fixtures
- TSON Change Report Addendum: Open-Form Representation — Two Endpoints
Finds that the change report's inability to represent a parameter inside a collection-valued slot is a symptom rather than a missing feature: a quotation typed slot-by-slot is incomplete wherever the vocabulary it quotes recurses. Sets out the two coherent completions — grow the template vocabulary, or drop typed open representation and bind once at materialisation — and recommends the second.
- Review Inputs Measured Against Revision 33 — Summary and Revision 34 Recommendations
Seven review documents prepared against revision 32 arrived after revision 33 was executed. This measures each against what revision 33 actually contains — separating the asks it already answers from the remainder — and assembles what is left into a recommended scope and sequence for revision 34. The implementation feedback register comes out fully subsumed.
- Implementation Feedback
Issues, ambiguities, and inconsistencies found in the specification while building the first implementation, each recorded with the reading that implementation chose and a suggested resolution. The most direct feedback loop the draft currently has.
Implementations of TSON (parsers, encoders, libraries) may be licensed however you choose; the specification's license applies to the written text, not to code that implements it.