- Google Cloud published the Open Knowledge Format (OKF) v0.1 spec on June 12, 2026, under an Apache 2.0 license.
- A bundle is plain Markdown, one concept per file, so an agent fetches only the pieces it needs instead of your whole page.
- OKF is closest to Agent Skills and ICM, not MCP, and it is hard to gate, so publish your public knowledge and keep proprietary work behind an API.
- AEO God Mode generates a spec-conformant bundle from your WordPress content and serves it live at /okf/, free.
The Open Knowledge Format is a way to package your knowledge as plain Markdown files so AI agents can read it without scraping your whole site. Google Cloud published the v0.1 spec on June 12, 2026 under an Apache 2.0 license. You give agents a map of your knowledge, not your entire context window, and they fetch only the parts they need.
That is the whole idea. The rest of this post is what it actually contains, how it compares to the things people keep confusing it with, the one question nobody is answering honestly (your IP), and how to publish a valid bundle from WordPress in a few minutes.
What is the Open Knowledge Format?
The Open Knowledge Format is a directory of Markdown files where each file holds one concept, not a whole web page. Every file opens with a small block of YAML frontmatter that says what the concept is, and the body below it is ordinary Markdown: headings, lists, tables, code.
The point of one-concept-per-file is retrieval. An agent reads the lightweight metadata, decides which two or three files answer the question in front of it, and pulls only those. Compare that to handing an agent a 4,000-word page and hoping the right sentence survives the trip into its context window.
One file per concept. The only required field is type. Links between concepts are plain Markdown, so the bundle is also a graph.
Who created OKF, and when?
Google Cloud created OKF. Tech leads Sam McVeety and Amir Hormati published the v0.1 specification on June 12, 2026, on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license, alongside three sample bundles (GA4 e-commerce, the Stack Overflow public dataset, the Bitcoin public dataset) and two reference implementations.
It is a proposed standard at version 0.1, so expect changes. The value is not the Markdown, which has existed forever. The value is the agreement: any tool that reads the spec can read any bundle that follows it, with no SDK and no vendor in the middle.
What does an OKF bundle look like?
A bundle is a folder of .md files plus two reserved files. Here are the rules that matter, taken from the spec.
| Element | What it is | Required? |
|---|---|---|
type |
A short string naming the kind of concept | Yes (the only required field) |
title |
Human-readable display name | Recommended |
description |
One-sentence summary | Recommended |
resource |
A URI for the underlying asset | Recommended |
tags |
A list for cross-cutting categories | Recommended |
timestamp |
ISO 8601 datetime of last change | Recommended |
index.md |
Reserved: the directory listing, carries okf_version |
Per spec |
log.md |
Reserved: the change history | Per spec |
Two more things worth knowing. Concept IDs come from the file path, so posts/schema-markup.md is the concept’s identity. Relationships between concepts are plain Markdown links, either bundle-relative (starting with /) or relative paths, and the kind of relationship lives in your prose rather than in the link. A bundle of linked concept files is therefore also a knowledge graph.
How is OKF different from MCP, Agent Skills, llms.txt and ICM?
People are mixing these up, so here is the honest version.
| Standard | What it is | Where the knowledge lives | Best at |
|---|---|---|---|
| OKF | A Markdown bundle of concept files | Public, on your site | Letting any agent discover and use your knowledge |
| llms.txt | A single curated link file | Public | Pointing crawlers at your key pages |
| MCP | A server exposing tools and resources | Your server, can stay private | Live, gated, interactive access |
| Agent Skills | A Markdown package, often with scripts | On the client | Teaching one agent a repeatable procedure |
| ICM | A folder-structure methodology | Your repo | The design pattern OKF formalizes |
The closest relatives are Agent Skills and ICM, not MCP. Agent Skills and OKF both ship readable text to the client, which is also why both are hard to gate behind a paywall. MCP keeps the knowledge on your server, so it has more obvious commercial control. And credit where it is due: several people in the field, including Jake Van Clief and David McDermott with their Interpretable Context Methodology, described folder-structure-as-architecture months before this spec landed. OKF is the standardized, Google-backed version of an idea that was already circulating.
Should you publish your knowledge as OKF? The IP question nobody answers.
Publish your public knowledge as OKF. Do not dump your proprietary processes into it. Curate.
This is the question that keeps coming up and gets hand-waved away: an OKF bundle is transparent by design, so why would you hand over the thing people pay you for? You would not. The move is to publish what you already give away (your explainers, your definitions, your product facts, your docs) in a format agents can actually use, and to keep the secret sauce behind an API or an MCP server where access stays under your control.
Two honest caveats while the spec is young:
- The v0.1 spec has no fields for licensing or terms of use. If you want machine-readable rules about who may use your bundle and how, they are not in the format yet. Watch this space, because it is the gap most likely to get filled.
- The pitch that you will sell OKF bundles like an expert in a box is plausible but unproven. Plain text on the client is easy to copy. Treat reselling as an experiment, not a business plan, until the licensing question is settled.
So the cynical comment doing the rounds, that OKF stands for “obviously knowledge farming,” is not entirely wrong about the incentive. Google benefits when sites volunteer clean, structured, public-domain knowledge it would otherwise pay to scrape and clean. You can still win here. You just publish on your terms and keep the crown jewels out of the bundle.
How to publish your OKF from WordPress
AEO God Mode generates a spec-conformant OKF v0.1 bundle from your published content and serves it live at /okf/. It is a free feature. Here is the flow.
Page
Other
Internal link
Generate bundle now
Conforms to OKF v0.1
Copy
- Install AEO God Mode and open the OKF screen.
- The plugin turns every published post, page and public custom type into one concept file, fills in the frontmatter (
type,title,description,resource,tags,timestamp), and rewrites your internal links into bundle-relative links so the bundle is also a graph. - It writes the reserved
index.mdandlog.mdfor you, and shows a conformance check against the v0.1 spec. - Your bundle is served at
yoursite.com/okf/. Agents can read the index, follow links between concepts, or download the whole thing as a zip. - It regenerates on its own whenever you publish, update or remove content, so the bundle never drifts from your site.
You curate what goes in, you get a valid bundle, and you do not touch a line of Markdown unless you want to.
Our take
OKF is worth doing now, for the same reason a sitemap was worth doing in 2005: it is cheap, it is standardized, and the agents that read it are arriving fast. The mistake would be treating it as a magic SEO lever. It is plumbing. Get your public knowledge into the format, keep your proprietary knowledge out of it, and revisit the moment the spec grows licensing fields. The sites that show up clean and structured when an agent goes looking will be the ones that get used.
Frequently asked questions
Is OKF a Google product or an open standard?
Both. Google Cloud authored and published the OKF v0.1 spec on June 12, 2026, and released it on GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license, so anyone can implement it without permission.
Do I need special software to read or publish an OKF bundle?
No. A bundle is plain Markdown, so you can read it in any text editor and ship it the way you ship any folder of files. On WordPress, AEO God Mode generates and serves a conformant bundle automatically.
Is OKF the same as llms.txt?
No. llms.txt is a single file that points crawlers at your important pages. OKF is a structured bundle of concept files with metadata and links between them, built for agents to fetch specific knowledge rather than a list of URLs.
Will publishing an OKF bundle expose my private information?
Only what you choose to include. A bundle is transparent, so publish public knowledge and keep proprietary processes behind an API or MCP server.
Where is my OKF bundle served?
At yoursite.com/okf/, with a fallback address for sites that do not use pretty permalinks, plus a downloadable zip of the full bundle.
What does the only required field, type, do?
It names the kind of concept, for example post, page or glossary, so an agent can filter and route without reading the whole file first.