Lexicon Community

Lexicon Community

A working group that stewards a shared namespace for ATProtocol schemas — built in the open, governed collectively, and free for anyone to use.

Browse schemas Join the discussion ↗

01 · About

What is Lexicon Community?

Lexicon Community is a volunteer-run working group that creates and maintains community ATProtocol Lexicons under the community.lexicon.* namespace.

Lexicons are the schema definitions that give ATProtocol records their shape — they describe the types, methods, and constraints that applications share across the network. Most lexicons today live under vendor-controlled namespaces like app.bsky.*. Lexicon Community offers a neutral home: a namespace that no single company owns, governed by an open Technical Steering Committee and published under the MIT license.

Neutral namespace
Schemas published under community.lexicon.* are not tied to any single product or company.
Open governance
A Technical Steering Committee of seven members stewards the namespace, with all decisions made in public.
Working-group model
New lexicons are developed by small, focused working groups and reviewed openly before merge.
MIT licensed
Every schema, reference, and governance document is free to use, fork, and remix.

Technical Steering Committee

Boris Mann
@bmann.ca
Ms Boba
@essentialrandom.bsky.social
Nick Gerakines
@ngerakines.me
Rudy Fraser
@rude1.blacksky.team
Ryan Barrett
@snarfed.org
Tom Sherman
@tom.sherman.is
Bluesky, PBC
@bsky.app

02 · Schemas

Lexicons under community.lexicon.*

These namespaces are developed openly in the community lexicon repository. The list below is compiled from lexicon.garden, an independent browser and validator for ATProtocol lexicons.

Bookmarks

community.lexicon.bookmarks

Save and retrieve bookmarks — a portable, protocol-native alternative to siloed read-later services.

  • bookmark record
  • getActorBookmarks query

Calendar

community.lexicon.calendar

Events and RSVPs for the open social web — a shared schema for everything from meetups to conferences.

  • authFull permission-set
  • event record
  • getEvent query
  • getRSVP query
  • rsvp record
  • searchEvents query

Location

community.lexicon.location

Represent places with multiple encodings — street addresses, geo coordinates, H3 cells, and Foursquare POIs.

  • address object
  • fsq object
  • geo object
  • hthree object

Your lexicon here

community.lexicon.…

Have an idea for a new namespace? Lexicon Community is actively chartering working groups. Start a conversation on Discourse or open a discussion in the governance repo.

03 · Contribute

How to get involved

Lexicon Community is volunteer-run and contributions take many shapes — schema design, documentation, reference code, governance, or simply weighing in on proposals.

  1. 1

    Start a conversation — lead with interop

    Ideas begin on the Lexicon Community forum. We’re not here to create lexicons for their own sake — the goal is to bridge people actively building toward interoperability. Point to the existing lexicon, application, SDK, or tool you want to interoperate with, name the builders already working in the space, and describe what a shared schema would unlock.

  2. 2

    Form a working group

    Interested and relevant parties collaborate on the design. The Technical Steering Committee designates a sponsor — a single TSC member responsible for coordinating the effort and breaking ties when consensus stalls.

  3. 3

    Propose major changes

    Major changes — new lexicon schema definitions, modifications to existing ones, or the removal of a schema — are proposed as pull requests against lexicon-community/lexicon. Ideally, most of the discussion and subsequent agreement has already happened on Discourse by the time a pull request lands — the PR represents that consolidated work, not a place to hash it out. We encourage iteration and experimentation with real applications and code, using tools like Lexicon Garden to try out schema shapes, to find the best path forward.

  4. 4

    Review & approve

    Collaborators review and approve the pull request in the open, alongside one or more members of the Technical Steering Committee.

  5. 5

    Ship & announce

    Merged lexicons are published through the official discovery paths (PDS records and DNS) and announced through Lexicon Community’s social channels.

Discourse forum ↗
Proposals, feedback, and working-group coordination.
Governance repo ↗
Bylaws, contributing guide, and code of conduct.
Lexicon repo ↗
The canonical home of community.lexicon.*.