Open specificationknowledge for AI agentsv0.1 draft
microon is an open specification for knowledge that AI agents can trust — quads that carry their context: layer, time window, origin. Who asserted a fact, when it held, and who may change it are queryable facts, not policy documents. Five principles are normative. Everything else is implementation-defined.
sensor-fcu01-st01subject
currentValuepredicate
22.5objectstatelayer
2026-04-05T14:30:00Zvalid from
—valid to (still true)
pda-fieldbusasserted byThe graph is a view over the ontological description stored in microon: subjects and objects become nodes, predicates become directed edges, and the context travels with every edge. The same quads serve the AI agent — switch the view to see what it reads. Adding knowledge means adding quads; every view follows.
> query { subject: room-301, at: now }
← room-301 · partOf · bld-jn1420 [structure · usr-tom · 2025-11 → —]
← fcu-01 · installedIn · room-301 [structure · usr-tom · 2025-11 → —]
← room-301 · setpoint · 22.0 [state · usr-tom · 09:00 → —]
← agt-edgar · mayWrite·setpoint · room-301 [authz · usr-tom · granted → —]
> may agt-edgar write room-301/setpoint ?
← yes — the authz quad above: granted by usr-tom, revocable, in force now
> replace { room-301 · setpoint · 21.5 } as agt-edgar
← closed room-301 · setpoint · 22.0 [state · usr-tom · 09:00 → 15:02]
← asserted room-301 · setpoint · 21.5 [state · agt-edgar · 15:02 → —]
Arrows read subject → object: room-301 is partOf bld-jn1420. Predicate above each edge, context below — layer and origin; colors are the five layers. The agent view is the same nine quads answered as queries — including a write: the old fact closes, the new one carries the agent's origin.
A system that satisfies all five principles is a microon system, independent of storage, query language, transport, or vocabulary.
Every fact is a quad: subject, predicate, object, context. Context holds the fact’s conditions of truth — its layer, its time window, its origin. A bare triple is not a valid microon fact.
Context is not topic. What a fact concerns is expressed by predicates (locatedIn, partOf) and queried like any other fact.
The store is append-only. Each fact is valid from a moment until a moment; an open end means currently true. Update means: close the old fact and assert the new one, atomically. Point-in-time queries require no additional machinery.
Every fact records the agent that asserted it — a device, a person, a service, an AI agent. Implementations MUST reject facts without a verifiable origin. Confidence (measured / inferred / declared) is an optional extension on the same axis.
Every fact belongs to exactly one of five layers. The layer set is fixed and identical in every domain. Authorization facts are ordinary quads in the authz layer, with time windows and origins like any other fact.
microon excludes inference engines, reification, blank nodes, and mandatory serialization formats. Reference storage model: one table of quads. Target: understood in one page, implemented in a weekend.
microon defines no conformance suite and no committee. The five principles are normative. Everything else is implementation-defined.
An agent acting on the physical world needs three answers before every action: is this fact current, who says so, and am I allowed. In microon all three are queries against the same store.
sensor-fcu01-st01 currentValue 22.5 [state · pda-fieldbus · 14:30 → —]
agt-edgar mayWrite state/setpoint [authz · usr-tom · granted, revocable]
Every fact carries a verified origin and a time window. Stale, unverifiable input — the root of agent failure — is detectable by construction.
What an agent may read or write is stored in the authz layer as ordinary quads: granted by someone, valid from–until, revocable by closing the fact.
The specification ships as plain Markdown (/spec/index.md), a language-model index (/llms.txt), and JSON-LD on every page.
Existing knowledge representations attach context, time, and origin as extensions. microon defines them as part of the fact.
| Core unit | Context | Time | Origin | Authz | Complexity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RDF / OWL | triple | named graphs | — | PROV-O | — | very high |
| JSON-LD | document | @context | — | — | — | medium |
| Brick Schema | triple | — | — | — | — | medium |
| Project Haystack | tag dict | — | — | — | — | low |
| microon | quad | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | low |
The specification defines the quad, the five principles, the layer set, the minimal operation set, and non-normative conventions. Machine-readable: /spec/index.md · /llms.txt
Read the specification →