What is UKS?

The Universal Knowledge & Action Schema (UKS) is an open, portable, AI-native format for packaging knowledge. A UKS packet is a single self-describing JSON document that carries not just data, but everything an AI system needs to use it: where the data came from, how trustworthy it is, how to acquire more, what rules govern it, and what an agent should do with it.

The problem it solves

Every team that builds a knowledge pipeline reinvents the same five things, in incompatible ways:

• Data contracts — the shape and meaning of fields
• Scraping configs — which URLs and APIs, with what auth
• Extraction rules — selectors, regex, parsing prompts
• Directives — validation, routing, governance logic
• Agent instructions — what the LLM should do once it has the data

A packet produced by one system can't be consumed by another without glue code. UKS fills that gap with one portable format that carries all five concerns together.

The five layers

Layer	Name	Answers
A	Data Contracts & Sources	What the data is, with evidence grading and license info
B	Scrape Targets	Where to acquire more data
C	Extraction Rules	How to parse and normalize it
D	Directives	Under what rules it should be processed
E	Actions & Agent Instructions	What an agent should do with it

You only use the layers you need — see Conformance Levels.

What makes it AI-native

• Evidence is first-class. Every source carries a GRADE-aligned evidence grade and a clinical status that is never a boolean.
• Licenses never collapse. Each record keeps a license_label and a rights_url, so agents can make correct reuse decisions.
• Agent actions travel with the knowledge. Layer E means a packet can tell an agent what to do, not just what to know.
• It's verifiable. Packets validate against a normative JSON Schema, can be cryptographically signed, and are content-addressable.

A minimal packet (L1)

{
  "packet_id": "uks-omega3-v1",
  "schema_version": "3.0",
  "conformance_level": "L1",
  "created_at": "2026-06-15T00:00:00Z",
  "topic": { "title": "Omega-3 Fatty Acids" },
  "sources": [{
    "id": "src_001",
    "title": "EPA and DHA supplementation and cardiovascular risk",
    "source_type": "meta_analysis",
    "credibility_score": 9,
    "evidence_grade": "high",
    "clinical_status": "validated",
    "doi": "10.1000/example",
    "license_label": "CC BY 4.0",
    "rights_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  }]
}

How it fits together

• SaberTools produces UKS packets from live research.
• The standard defines what a valid packet is.
• The Registry serves verified packets back to agents.

→ Next: Getting Started · Conformance Levels · The Spec