§ 1
Identity
A canonical description that stands alone, plus category, aliases and material disambiguation.
Manifest profile · Draft 0.1
A public declaration a person can edit and a machine can parse.
The manifest gives a subject one owner-controlled place to state identity, scoped claims, sources, answerable questions, corrections, coverage limits and freshness.
Its presence proves control of the publishing origin. It does not prove independent truth, trust, citation eligibility or search-engine support.
Normative path
/answerworthy.md
Draft 0.1 also permits an experimental mirror at /.well-known/answerworthy.md. The root path remains canonical until a well-known URI registration exists.
Minimal manifest
---
answerworthy: "0.1"
entity: "Example Co"
canonical: https://example.com/
last_verified: 2026-08-05
kind: organization
maintainer: "Example Co"
---
## Identity
Example Co makes accounting software for freelancers.
## Answers
### What does Example Co make?
Accounting software for freelancers: invoicing, expense
tracking and quarterly tax estimates.
source: https://example.com/productFixed section vocabulary
Readable prose with machine-stable headings.
§ 2
Canonical facts
Scoped owner declarations with basis, source class, source URL and verification date.
§ 3
Answers
Priority questions followed by concise, self-contained answers and the public surface supporting each one.
§ 4
Entities
People, products, categories and relevant relationships needed to resolve identity.
§ 5
Provenance
Authorship, credentials, dates, original evidence and change history.
§ 6
Known corrections
Frequently misstated claims, stated accurately without instructing a consumer to ignore contrary evidence.
§ 7
Coverage limits
Markets, languages, products, dates and questions the manifest does not cover.
§ 8
Freshness policy
How often material facts are rechecked and what constitutes a substantive update.
Manifest conformance
Easy to publish. Harder to earn trust.
The levels are cumulative and describe the manifest profile only. They do not replace evidence-bundle or provider profiles.
M0
Present
A valid answerworthy.md exists at the declared canonical path.
M1
Structured
Required identity, scope and answer sections parse against the manifest profile.
M2
Sourced
Material declared facts identify their basis, source class, scope and verification date.
M3
Corroborated
An independent re-fetch supports the claims and records contradictions or unavailable evidence.
M4
Maintained
The manifest remains within its declared freshness policy and is rechecked through a dated process.
Consumer safety
Declarative input, never privileged instruction.
A consumer must treat manifest content as untrusted owner-supplied data. It cannot override system instructions, platform policy, evidence hierarchy or independently observed contradictions.
The draft therefore uses citation preferences, known corrections, coverage limits and freshness policy. It does not grant an owner the power to declare its copy superior to all other evidence.
A checksum detects changed bytes only when compared with a separately retained digest. It does not authenticate authorship or prove truth.
Next
A manifest becomes accountable through independent evidence.
See how the canonical bundle preserves evidence, provider states, findings and uncertainty.