Interfaces and Schemas
ORD defines a small set of complementary interfaces for discovering and exchanging metadata. The human-readable reference pages explain their fields, while the JSON Schemas and OpenAPI definition provide machine-readable contracts for implementation and validation.
For pull transport, an ORD consumer first reads the ORD Configuration, which points to one or more ORD Documents and describes how they can be retrieved. ORD Documents carry the actual resource and taxonomy metadata. ORD Overlays can optionally enrich supported metadata or referenced resource definitions without changing the original source files.
Interface Overview
ORD Configuration
The discovery entry point for pull transport.
It advertises available ORD Documents, their perspectives and access strategies, and optional provider capabilities.
ORD Document
The main metadata payload exchanged between ORD providers and consumers.
It describes resources, taxonomy, relationships, lifecycle information, visibility, and the represented system perspective.
ORD Overlay (beta)
An optional extension for applying targeted metadata patches without modifying the original artifact.
It can enrich ORD resources and supported resource definition formats such as OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, OData, MCP, and A2A.
ORD Document API
The HTTP interface for retrieving ORD Configuration and ORD Documents through pull transport.
The OpenAPI definition complements the payload schemas with endpoint, parameter, response, and media-type details.
Explore and Consume the Interfaces
Use the interactive explorer for visual inspection, or add the published package as an implementation dependency.
Schema Explorer
Browse the ORD Document, Configuration, and Overlay schemas interactively.
Navigate nested types, inspect constraints, and understand how schema definitions relate without reading the raw JSON Schema.
NPM Package
The @open-resource-discovery/specification package bundles the published JSON Schemas and generated TypeScript types.
Implementations can add it as a dependency to validate ORD payloads and use the interfaces directly without copying generated files.