Released Editor's Draft · Public Draft 2026-10

KP:1

An open, text-native format for packaging epistemic state — claims, confidence, evidence, contradictions, and the trace of how beliefs evolved, preserved as structure.

Read the specification GitHub repository

Latest citable release: v0.8.5-preview 2026-10-13 CC BY 4.0 DOI 10.5281/zenodo.19445262

Abstract

KP:1 is an open, text-native format for representing epistemic state: assertions and explanations with their context, confidence, evidence, relationships and history. It helps people and AI carry articulated understanding between tasks and tools through an account that others can inspect, challenge, correct and continue. The specification defines a directory and claim contract, a JSON Schema and PEG grammar, and topic companions for evidence, history, views, composition, multilingual sources and archives. Source accounts remain distinct from adopted assessments; uncertainty and contrary evidence remain explicit. This released editor's draft includes reference validation and experimental graph compilation, with their coverage and limits documented separately. It does not certify source truth, calibrated confidence, recipient understanding or permanent custody, and it does not promise stable V1 compatibility.

What makes KP:1 distinct

KP:1 brings assertions, explanations and their grounds into one portable record. Uncertainty, disagreement and history remain addressable, so people and AI can examine the connections and continue the inquiry. The format shows how those distinctions are represented.

claims.md — acquisition review 3 claims format excerpt 
<!-- KP:1 — self-describing header: a reader bootstraps the format from the file
     - [ID] assertion  {confidence|type|evidence|date|depth|nature}   (depth, nature optional)
     type   o observed · r reported · c computed · i inferred
     rel    → supports · ⊗ contradicts · ⊗! error · ⊗~ tension · ⊘ supersedes -->

- [C005] The museum catalog raisonné dates the work 1962.
  {0.93|r|E003|2020-04-30|exhaustive} ↔C004

- [C024] The work was made in 1962.
  {0.93|i|E003,E009|2025-11-20|investigated|judgment} ⊘C023, ⊗!C023

- [C019] Recommended action: conditional acquisition.
  {0.78|i|E001,E004,E005,E006,E008,E010|2026-05-09|investigated|judgment} ←C017
Reports · assessments · decisions A source report stays separate from the adopted dating. C024 corrects C023, retained in history; the conditional recommendation considers C017's risk. This fictional pack excerpt omits the required frontmatter, document and section headings, and supporting records; the full example contains them.

  • Typed contradiction qualifiers

    Recorded conflicts distinguish plain contradiction, an assessed error, or informative tension. Readers can inspect the competing assertions and their grounds.

  • Voyager-Principle Rosetta header

    Zero-dependency parsing: a reader can bootstrap the format from the file itself, with no external schema to fetch.

  • Supersession with append-only history

    When a belief changes, the prior claim is superseded, not deleted, so how the thinking moved stays legible.

  • Three-surface architecture

    One source of truth, three reads: claims for AI reasoning, display views for visual reading, voice views for spoken delivery.

Read the specification