References
External standards, comparable libraries, and tooling referenced throughout the docs. This page is the canonical home for outbound links - other pages reference back here rather than re-stating URLs.
Supported dialect
json-tology targets JSON Schema draft 2020-12 (https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema). All examples and documentation assume this dialect. The specification is on track for Proposed Standard via the IETF JSON Schema Working Group.
Standards conformance
W3C / RDF / OWL / SHACL conformance is aspirational and a work in progress. json-tology emits OWL TBox and SHACL shapes from the canonical graph and round-trips RDF quads, but full normative conformance with each spec is still being built out. Output is intended to load into tools like Protege, TopBraid Composer, and standards-track reasoners; expect rough edges as the projection layers catch up to the specs.
If you hit a conformance gap, open an issue at github.com/Studnicky/json-tology/issues.
Standards
| Spec | Where used in json-tology |
|---|---|
| JSON Schema 2020-12 | The authoring language. Every schema literal is a draft-2020-12 document. |
| JSON Pointer (RFC 6901) | Error paths, subschemaAt, $ref fragments. |
| Problem Details (RFC 7807) | ValidationErrors.report() shape. |
| RDF 1.2 Concepts | Quad model, IRIs, literals. |
| RDF 1.1 §3.5 Skolemization | Well-known genid IRI pattern minted by Skolemize.wellKnownGenid. |
| RDFC-1.0 (RDF Dataset Canonicalization) | Reference for deterministic identification of RDF nodes in the skolemization design. |
| RDF Schema 1.1 | rdfs:Class, rdfs:domain, rdfs:range, rdfs:subClassOf emission. |
| OWL 2 Web Ontology Language | TBox emission via JsonTology.toTbox() / entities.ontology(). |
| SHACL Shapes Constraint Language | SHACL shape emission via JsonTology.toShacl(). |
| JSON-LD 1.1 | TBox/quad serialization format via toTbox, toShacl, ontology. |
| XSD Datatypes | Mapping JSON Schema format to XSD types in the RDF projection. |
| Schema.org | Default vocabulary for property predicates. |
| Dublin Core Terms | Optional metadata predicates. |
| Turtle (W3C) | Round-trippable serialization (via downstream tooling). |
Tooling and ecosystem
External JSON Schema tooling and commentary that frame json-tology's positioning. json-tology is one node in a wider JSON Schema ecosystem; these references are where to look when the question is about JSON Schema as a language rather than json-tology as a library.
sourcemeta/jsonschema
The reference command-line tool for JSON Schema authors - linting, formatting, bundling, dereferencing, dialect upgrades, schema-level unit tests, and binary encoding, supporting every dialect from Draft 0 through 2020-12. It is the right tool for treating JSON Schema documents themselves as a build artifact: pre-commit format checks, CI lint gates, bundle-for-distribution. json-tology authors who keep schemas in a shared registry should run sourcemeta/jsonschema alongside json-tology's TypeScript-side checks.
AI only speaks JSON Schema
Sourcemeta essay documenting that every major LLM provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Mistral, DeepSeek) converged on JSON Schema as the sole schema language for structured outputs and tool calling - not Protocol Buffers, not Avro, not OpenAPI, not Pydantic-as-source. This is the external argument for json-tology's wager: if JSON Schema is what models speak, then the authoring language should be JSON Schema and everything else (TypeScript types, OWL TBox, SHACL shapes, RDF) should be projections of it.
IETF JSON Schema Working Group
The active IETF working group taking JSON Schema toward a Proposed Standard RFC, chaired by Paul E. Hoffman with target publication May 2027. The WG charter scopes a single RFC covering features already in known use, plus IANA media-type registration and security considerations. json-tology's contract - "JSON Schema is the authoring language" - is a bet on this standardization track; users who care about long-term spec stability should track the WG's drafts and milestones.
Comparable libraries
| Library | Language | Where compared |
|---|---|---|
| Zod | TypeScript | Validation, coercion, transforms - DSL-first vs json-tology's JSON-Schema-first |
| Valibot | TypeScript | Validation, transforms - tree-shakable functional API |
| TypeBox | TypeScript | Closest comparator - TypeBox schemas are JSON Schema |
| AJV | JavaScript | Pure JSON Schema validator - no TS inference, no ontology output |
| Pydantic | Python | Cross-language reference for the type-first runtime-validating model |
| Yup | TypeScript | Older DSL-first validator |
| Joi | JavaScript | Older DSL-first validator |
| io-ts | TypeScript | Functional codec library |
| Effect Schema | TypeScript | Codec library inside the Effect ecosystem |
| ArkType | TypeScript | DSL-first with TS-string-literal grammar |
| Runtypes | TypeScript | Functional combinator library |
Comparison code-group blocks throughout the docs show the equivalent code in each library where supported, with Limitation: notes where the peer library cannot express the concept.
Reasoners and graph tooling
| Tool | Use |
|---|---|
| eye-js / eyereasoner | N3-rule reasoner; embedded in dev dependencies for testing TBox round-trips |
| N3.js | Quad parser/serializer used by the RDF round-trip layer |
| @rdfjs/types | Standard quad-shape interfaces |
| Comunica | SPARQL engine over RDF/JS sources (compatible target for emitted graphs) |
| Apache Jena | Standards-track Java reasoner; useful for cross-checking emitted TBox |
| Protege | Visual ontology editor; loads emitted TBox |
| TopBraid Composer | Commercial ontology IDE |
| WebVOWL | Visual notation for OWL ontologies |
Languages and runtimes
- TypeScript - inference engine for
InferType. - Node.js - runtime; minimum
>=24.0.0. - Vite - bundler used by the docs site.
- VitePress - documentation framework.
- Cytoscape.js - the live graph at Your types are a graph.
Visual identity
The seven hex nodes that flank the JST badge in the README and ring the sidebar are stylized references to. Each links to its canonical home:
- TypeScript (
#3178c6adjacent) - the inference engine - JSON Schema - the source-of-truth language
- Validation - the JSON Schema Validation vocabulary spec
- RDF - the canonical graph model (RDF 1.2 Concepts)
- W3C - standards alignment
- Node.js - the runtime
- json-tology - the center JST node, this project
The center JST node uses a teal gradient (#7FE7D8 -> #24A5B5 -> #08717A) with #BDF6F2 circuit accents. These are the project's brand colors and drive the doc-site palette.
Benchmarks
Performance comparisons between json-tology and AJV, Zod, TypeBox, Valibot, io-ts, plus JSON.stringify and structuredClone. The full suite, methodology, reproduction steps, and the latest published numbers live on the dedicated Benchmarks page. Source files: examples/docs/benchmarks/.
Where these are referenced
Comparison blocks: every operator page (/validation/*, /composition/*, /transforms/*, /serialization/*, /registry/*).
Standards prose: /advanced/ontology, /advanced/quads, /advanced/sub-schemas, /advanced/graph-concepts, /schemas/jt-keywords, /errors/views.