Standard Site

Standard.site

Convert data into Standard.site lexicon records for the AT Protocol and validate them against the official schemas.

When to Use

• Creating publication, document, subscription, recommend, or theme records
• Converting blog posts, articles, or other content into standard.site format
• Validating existing records against standard.site lexicon schemas
• Working with AT Protocol publishing workflows that involve standard.site
• Mapping content from other formats (RSS, Markdown, JSON) to standard.site

Lexicons at a Glance

All colors in themes use site.standard.theme.color#rgb (r, g, b as integers 0–255) or site.standard.theme.color#rgba (adds a as integer 0–100).

Conversion Workflow

1. Identify the target lexicon. Determine which record type the data maps to:

   • A blog/site with a URL and name → publication
   • An individual article or post → document
   • A user following a publication → subscription
   • A user endorsing a document → recommend
   • Color scheme for a publication → theme (embedded inside publication as basicTheme)

2. Map required fields first. Every record must include $type and all required properties. See the quick reference table above.

3. Add optional fields. Include optional properties when the source data provides them. Do not invent values for missing optional fields.

4. Validate. Run the validation script before finalizing:

uv run scripts/validate.py --input record.json

Or pipe JSON via stdin:

cat record.json | uv run scripts/validate.py --stdin

5. Fix any errors. The script reports each issue with the property path and expected format. Fix and re-validate until it passes.

Validation

The bundled scripts/validate.py checks records against the standard.site lexicon schemas:

• Detects $type and validates against the matching schema
• Checks all required properties are present
• Checks property types (string, integer, datetime, blob, at-uri, ref, array, object)
• Checks constraints (maxLength, maxGraphemes, integer ranges for colors)
• Validates nested objects (basicTheme colors, contributors, preferences)
• Supports validating a single record or an array of records

# Validate a single record
uv run scripts/validate.py --input publication.json

# Validate from stdin
echo '{"$type":"site.standard.publication","url":"https://example.com","name":"Test"}' | uv run scripts/validate.py --stdin

# Validate multiple records in a JSON array
uv run scripts/validate.py --input records.json

Output is structured JSON to stdout, diagnostics to stderr. Exit code 0 = valid, 1 = invalid, 2 = usage error.

Record Templates

Publication

{
  "$type": "site.standard.publication",
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "name": "Example Blog",
  "description": "A blog about technology",
  "basicTheme": {
    "$type": "site.standard.theme.basic",
    "background": { "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb", "r": 255, "g": 255, "b": 255 },
    "foreground": { "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb", "r": 31, "g": 41, "b": 55 },
    "accent": { "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb", "r": 59, "g": 130, "b": 246 },
    "accentForeground": { "$type": "site.standard.theme.color#rgb", "r": 255, "g": 255, "b": 255 }
  },
  "preferences": { "showInDiscover": true }
}

Document

{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "site": "at://did:plc:abc123/site.standard.publication/3lwafzkjqm25s",
  "path": "/blog/getting-started",
  "title": "Getting Started",
  "description": "Learn how to use Standard.site",
  "textContent": "Full text of the article...",
  "tags": ["tutorial", "atproto"],
  "publishedAt": "2024-01-20T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Subscription

{
  "$type": "site.standard.graph.subscription",
  "publication": "at://did:plc:abc123/site.standard.publication/3lwafzkjqm25s",
  "createdAt": "2026-05-19T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Recommend

{
  "$type": "site.standard.graph.recommend",
  "document": "at://did:plc:abc123/site.standard.document/3mbfqhezge25u",
  "createdAt": "2026-05-19T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Gotchas

• Trailing slashes. The spec says avoid trailing slashes on url (publication) and site (document), but some implementations include them. The validator trims trailing slashes before checking — do the same in your code.
• site vs url. In documents, site points to a publication record via at:// URI, or to a publication URL via https:// for loose documents. Both are valid.
• path must have a leading slash. Document path should start with / (e.g., /blog/post-slug).
• publishedAt is required for documents. Unlike createdAt on subscriptions (optional), publishedAt is required and must be an ISO 8601 datetime.
• createdAt is required for recommends. Unlike subscriptions where it's optional, recommends require createdAt.
• Tags should not have hashtag prefixes. Use "tutorial" not "#tutorial".
• RGB color values are integers 0–255. Not hex strings, not floats. RGBA alpha is 0–100 (percentage), not 0–255.
• All four theme colors are required. A basicTheme with only background and foreground is invalid — accent and accentForeground are also required.
• basicTheme is embedded in the publication record. It is not a standalone record — it's a nested object inside site.standard.publication.
• content is an open union. Each entry must specify a $type. The validator checks for $type presence but does not validate specific content formats.
• maxLength vs maxGraphemes. maxLength counts UTF-16 code units; maxGraphemes counts user-perceived characters. Both constraints apply simultaneously — a string can violate maxGraphemes while being under maxLength.

Verification

Standard.site records can be verified against their web presence:

• Publications: https://{url}/.well-known/site.standard.publication should return the publication's AT-URI. For non-root publications, append the path: /.well-known/site.standard.publication/path/to/publication.
• Documents: The document's HTML page should include a <link rel="site.standard.document" href="at://..."> tag in the <head>.

Verification is separate from schema validation — a record can be schema-valid but unverified, and vice versa.

Detailed References

Load these when you need full schema details, edge cases, or examples for a specific lexicon:

• references/publication.md — Full publication schema, blob handling, preferences, extensibility
• references/document.md — Full document schema, contributor format, content union, links
• references/subscription.md — Full subscription schema, AT-URI format
• references/recommend.md — Full recommend schema, permissions
• references/theme.md — Full theme schema, RGB/RGBA color types, contrast guidelines

Available Scripts

• scripts/validate.py — Validates standard.site records against lexicon schemas. Run with uv run scripts/validate.py --input <file> or --stdin.