TOON Format Specification

This repository contains the official specification for Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON), a compact, human-readable encoding of the JSON data model for LLM prompts. It provides a lossless serialization of the same objects, arrays, and primitives as JSON, but in a syntax that minimizes tokens and makes structure easy for models to follow.

📋 Specification

→ Read the full specification (SPEC.md)

• Version: 3.0 (2025-11-24)
• Status: Working Draft
• License: MIT

The specification includes complete grammar (ABNF), encoding rules, validation requirements, and conformance criteria.

What is TOON?

[!IMPORTANT] For a high-level overview of TOON, its features and benefits, design goals, and comparisons to other formats, see the toon-format/toon repository.

Serialization Example

<table> <tr> <th>JSON</th> <th>TOON</th> </tr> <tr> <td>

{
  "context": {
    "task": "Our favorite hikes together",
    "location": "Boulder",
    "season": "spring_2025"
  },
  "friends": ["ana", "luis", "sam"],
  "hikes": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Blue Lake Trail",
      "distanceKm": 7.5,
      "elevationGain": 320,
      "companion": "ana",
      "wasSunny": true
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "name": "Ridge Overlook",
      "distanceKm": 9.2,
      "elevationGain": 540,
      "companion": "luis",
      "wasSunny": false
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "name": "Wildflower Loop",
      "distanceKm": 5.1,
      "elevationGain": 180,
      "companion": "sam",
      "wasSunny": true
    }
  ]
}

</td> <td>

context:
  task: Our favorite hikes together
  location: Boulder
  season: spring_2025

friends[3]: ana,luis,sam

hikes[3]{id,name,distanceKm,elevationGain,companion,wasSunny}:
  1,Blue Lake Trail,7.5,320,ana,true
  2,Ridge Overlook,9.2,540,luis,false
  3,Wildflower Loop,5.1,180,sam,true

</td> </tr> </table>

Reference Implementation

The reference implementation in TypeScript/JavaScript is maintained at: github.com/toon-format/toon

The reference implementation includes:

• Complete encoder and decoder
• CLI tools for JSON ↔ TOON conversion
• Performance benchmarks

Community Implementations

Official community-driven implementations are currently being developed at the github.com/toon-format organization.

Test Fixtures & Conformance

The tests/fixtures/ directory contains language-agnostic JSON test fixtures for validating TOON implementations. Each fixture file contains test cases with input/output pairs covering all specification requirements.

What's included:

• Encoding tests: JSON → TOON conversion
• Decoding tests: TOON → JSON parsing
• Error cases: Validation and strict mode checks
• Edge cases: All corner cases from the specification

For implementers:

1. Load JSON fixtures from tests/fixtures/encode/ and tests/fixtures/decode/.
2. Run each test case against your implementation.
3. Report results using the conformance badge system.

See tests/README.md for detailed fixture format and usage instructions.

Media Type & File Extension

TOON defines a provisional media type (see §18.2 of the specification):

• Media type: text/toon (provisional, pending IANA registration)
• File extension: .toon
• Charset: Always UTF-8

For HTTP usage:

Content-Type: text/toon

See the full IANA Considerations section for details.

Contributing

We welcome contributions to improve the specification! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for:

• How to propose spec changes
• The RFC process for major changes
• Guidelines for submitting issues and pull requests

For implementation-specific questions or bugs, please refer to the respective implementation repository.

Versioning

The TOON specification follows semantic versioning. See VERSIONING.md for our versioning policy and compatibility guarantees.

Resources

• Specification: SPEC.md - Complete formal specification with ABNF grammar
• Examples: examples/ - Working examples organized by feature
• Test Fixtures: tests/fixtures/ - Comprehensive test suite
• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md - Version history and changes
• Reference Implementation: github.com/toon-format/toon - TypeScript/JavaScript implementation
• Benchmarks: Reference repo benchmarks/ - Token efficiency measurements and accuracy retrieval tests

License

MIT License © 2025-PRESENT Johann Schopplich