RecordWeb is an open composition architecture for institutionally provable information on the Web.

It assembles three W3C standards — DID, PROV-O, and VC — into a coherent protocol layer that makes institutional information attributable, versioned, and cryptographically verifiable, independent of the systems in which it is stored.

The Web made documents findable. Linked Data made facts linkable. RecordWeb makes institutional information provable.

RecordWeb defines a Record as the smallest semantically autonomous unit of institutional information — a building permit decision, a medical examination result, a parliamentary submission, a contract. Every Record in RecordWeb has:

• A permanent decentralised identity (did:rwp) that survives system migrations
• An immutable version graph in which every change creates a new cryptographically secured snapshot
• A provenance layer (PROV-O) that structurally encodes who produced what, when, and on the basis of what
• A tamper-evident proof (VC Data Model 2.0) that makes the Record verifiable without a central authority

RecordWeb is not a replacement for existing W3C standards. It is the missing composition — the protocol layer that connects DID, PROV-O, and VC into a deployable architecture for institutional information.

RecordWeb is governed by the RecordWeb Community Group under a minimal, consensus-based process. Start here if you want to understand or join how the specification actually gets changed:

• CGCharter.md — the Community Group charter
• GOVERNANCE.md — roles (Chairs, Editors, Contributors, Members) and the decision-making process

Substantive changes to the specification go through a Call for Consensus (CfC): a batch of related issues is opened for a minimum 14-day discussion and comment period, tracked as a dedicated issue labeled cfc in this repository, cross-linked from the individual issues under discussion in rwc and rwp. Anyone can follow along or comment — no membership required to participate in discussion.

The RecordWeb specification was developed in two foundational documents, both published as defensive prior art on Zenodo:

These documents are the single-author initial contribution by Nik Jenzer. They are explicitly intended as the foundation for a community-developed v1.0 — not as the conclusion of the specification process.

RecordWeb distinguishes two forms of participation:

Individuals who materially co-develop the RecordWeb specification — writing, reviewing, prototyping, and editing the technical documents. Contributors engage at the level of protocol design and implementation, and must agree to the W3C Community Contributor License Agreement.

How to contribute: open a substantive issue or pull request in the relevant repository (rwc or rwp) — that alone constitutes participation as a Contributor. See CONTRIBUTING.md where available.

Institutions with a professional stake in RecordWeb — public administrations, hospitals, regulated organisations, universities, software vendors, and standards bodies. Members provide use cases, validate the specification against real-world requirements, participate in pilots, and adopt RecordWeb in their domain. Membership does not require the CLA unless normative specification text is contributed.

Becoming a member: open an issue using the Member Registration template (GOVERNANCE.md §3.4).

RecordWeb is being developed as a W3C Community Group — the open, international forum for collaborative specification development.

• Chairs: Nik Jenzer · Melvin Carvalho
• Offical w3c sites: RecordWeb Community Group / Mailing List

The did:rwp DID method will be submitted to the W3C DID Specification Registries as a Community Group deliverable.

All specifications in this organisation are published under the W3C Software and Document License. Code is licensed under Apache 2.0.

• GitHub Issues: preferred for all technical and community questions
• Chairs: open an issue tagged [chairs] for governance questions