For AI agents: the complete documentation index is available at https://a3s-lab.github.io/Use/en/llms.txt, the full documentation bundle is available at https://a3s-lab.github.io/Use/en/llms-full.txt, and this page is available as Markdown at https://a3s-lab.github.io/Use/en/guide/okf.md.

OKF Knowledge Packages

OKF (Open Knowledge Format) is an open knowledge-package format for people and agents: just Markdown, just files, just YAML frontmatter. Current OKF v0.2 organizes shareable domain knowledge as a typed, cross-linked, incrementally indexable concept graph and defines a compatibility path for v0.1 content.

In the A3S Use target architecture, OKF is a first-class cognitive surface alongside Tool, MCP, Skill, and UI, but it is not an executable workload.

Current status: a3s-use-core now implements the frozen a3s.use.okf-bundle.v1 descriptor, bounded v0.2/v0.1 conformance inspector, and canonical fixtures. Manifest, catalog, plan, receipt/projection, lifecycle, and A3S Knowledge atomic-index integration remain pending. The current schema-v3 parser rejects an undefined okf block.

Bundle structure

An OKF bundle is a bounded directory. Each non-reserved Markdown file represents one concept; its bundle-relative path without .md is the concept ID. An optional index.md provides hierarchical navigation, and an optional log.md may record history at any level.

okf/domain-knowledge/
├── index.md
├── concepts/
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── package-lifecycle.md
│   └── runtime-boundary.md
├── decisions/
│   ├── index.md
│   └── no-provider-fallback.md
└── log.md

Concepts use standard Markdown links rather than a private wikilink syntax:

See [Runtime boundary](/concepts/runtime-boundary.md).

Concept contract

Every non-reserved concept is UTF-8 Markdown beginning with a properly delimited YAML frontmatter block. OKF requires one field: a non-empty scalar type.

---
type: Architecture Decision
title: No provider fallback
description: Why plugin workloads require one explicit Runtime provider.
resource: docs/adr-001-plugin-runtime-broker-boundary.md
tags: [runtime, security, plugins]
generated:
  by: a3s-okf-compiler/1.0
  at: 2026-07-31T00:00:00Z
sources:
  - id: runtime-boundary
    resource: docs/adr-001-plugin-runtime-broker-boundary.md
    title: Runtime Broker ADR
---

title, description, resource, and tags are recommended fields. OKF v0.2 also defines optional provenance, trust, lifecycle, and attested-computation families. Producer extension keys and unknown concept types remain conformant and must be preserved; a v0.2 consumer may fall back to legacy v0.1 timestamp and # Citations data.

index.md and log.md are reserved rather than concepts. Only the bundle-root index.md may contain frontmatter, and only to declare okf_version. Missing indexes and safe dangling links remain conformant and are reported as diagnostics rather than rejected.

Relationship to other surfaces

SurfaceDifference or relationship to OKF
SkillA Skill teaches an agent how to perform work; OKF supplies citable domain facts, decisions, and concepts. The target graph may let a Skill require one named OKF generation.
ToolA Tool performs real work; OKF runs no process, shell, or HTTP workload.
MCPMCP is a protocol server; OKF is static content indexed and retrieved by a Knowledge host.
UIUI may render knowledge, but OKF itself runs no JavaScript and receives no UI backend binding.
Personal KBPersonal /kb notes belong to the user; OKF is a publishable, deployable, versioned shared package asset.

OKF v0.2 may describe an Attested Computation, executor, and attester. A3S Use treats all of that as inert metadata. It never turns those fields into execution authority; runnable behavior still requires a separately declared and authorized Tool or host binding.

Install and index boundary

The target lifecycle reuses A3S Use package identity, plans, receipts, and capability generations:

signed catalog
  → review exact OKF digest, concept count, bytes, provenance
  → verify package and bounded OKF conformance
  → stage exact package generation
  → A3S Knowledge builds/stages its deterministic index
  → atomically promote the candidate OKF generation
  → publish the shared capability snapshot

A3S Use owns package and bundle integrity. A3S Knowledge owns conformant promotion, indexing, and line-cited retrieval. If candidate validation or indexing fails, the last successful generation remains searchable.

Compilation is not installation

PDF, Office, image, email, archive, and web content are compiler inputs—not OKF search authority. An independent knowledge compiler may normalize those sources into OKF, but the install plan reviews the final normalized bundle. Installation does not download or execute a compiler that changes reviewed content.

Security and uninstall

  • Concept text, frontmatter, links, and compiler provenance cannot change ACL policy or grants.
  • Paths, file count, expanded bytes, document bytes, and links per document are bounded. A safe dangling link is diagnostic; a reference that resolves outside the package boundary is rejected.
  • Search admits only a conformant generation atomically promoted by the host; it never infers success from a staging directory.
  • Disable only hides the OKF capability from new sessions.
  • Uninstall removes only package receipt-owned projection/index content, never personal notes, raw sources, or another package's index.

See M0K in the roadmap and the repository's OKF contribution workstream for implementation order.