# The specification, in reading order

Six documents, Draft v0.1, **published for public technical review** — written to be handed to a dev team cold. A competent team should be able to add a compliant endpoint to an existing in-house system in days, without adopting anyone's stack.

The source of truth is the public repository: these pages render [github.com/OpenYacht/protocol](https://github.com/OpenYacht/protocol) at every deploy. Accepted review changes amend the drafts in place, each carrying a note citing its source and date. Open questions are marked ⚠ inline; to respond, open a GitHub issue with the [“Consultation response” form](https://github.com/OpenYacht/protocol/issues/new/choose).

1

## [OpenYacht Federation Protocol](/spec/federation-protocol/)

Identity, trust, keys, discovery, request signing. Start here.

[spec/federation-protocol.md](/spec/federation-protocol/)

2

## [Yacht Identity, Authority, and Provenance](/spec/yacht-identity/)

Who owns a record: canonical URIs, authority, copies, provenance, usage terms.

[spec/yacht-identity.md](/spec/yacht-identity/)

3

## [Federation API](/spec/api-design/)

Endpoints, sync (updated\_since + tombstones), subscriptions, errors.

[spec/api-design.md](/spec/api-design/)

4

## [Listing Wire Schema](/spec/listing-schema/)

The field-by-field wire payload of a listing.

[spec/listing-schema.md](/spec/listing-schema/)

5

## [Conformance Checklist](/spec/conformance-checklist/)

Every MUST, collected into one self-certification sheet.

[spec/conformance-checklist.md](/spec/conformance-checklist/)

6

## [Request-Signing Test Vectors](/spec/signing-test-vectors/)

Byte-exact test vectors for the request signing.

[spec/signing-test-vectors.md](/spec/signing-test-vectors/)

## Machine-readable companions

The prose specification is normative. The JSON Schemas and the OpenAPI description are normative **for JSON shape only**; on any conflict the prose wins and the schema is defective. Schemas and registries live at permanent URLs and are meant to be **vendored**, never fetched at request time.

-   [/schemas/v1/](/schemas/) — JSON Schemas (2020-12) for every wire payload · 6 files
-   [/registry/builders.json](/registry/builders.json) — the fixed builder vocabulary · versioned like tzdata
-   [/registry/categories.json](/registry/categories.json) — the shared category vocabulary
-   [/registry/destinations.json](/registry/destinations.json) — the charter destination vocabulary
-   [/openapi/openyacht-v1.yaml](/openapi/openyacht-v1.yaml) — OpenAPI 3.1 description of the federation API