Digital Karma Federation Protocol v7.1

v7.1 is not a plugin, a closed platform, or a hosted service. It is a repeatable file and discovery standard. A site publishes six required federation artifacts, keeps /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml at the root, uses Schema.org on primary pages, and exposes enough structured context for AI systems to understand what the site is, what it publishes, and how it relates to other trusted sites.

1. Discovery starts at predictable URLs. Agents can begin with /ai/manifest.json, /llm.txt, /robots.txt, and the root /sitemap.xml.
2. The site describes itself in structured files. manifest.json, health.json, catalog.json, karma.json, and federation.json tell the agent what the site is, whether it is healthy, what data it publishes, and how it connects to peers.
3. Schema and entity files reduce guesswork. Primary pages and optional /entities/ files make the business, brand, services, and website relationships explicit.
4. Federation relationships add context. A site can point to related trusted properties, document bidirectional relationships, and publish deeper mapping files in /federation/.
5. Transparent scoring adds confidence. The Digital Karma model gives AI systems a public way to evaluate quality, freshness, completeness, and trust signals instead of relying on blind inference.

• Cleaner AI discovery: your site explains itself directly instead of hoping a model interprets scattered page copy correctly.
• Better implementation handoffs: developers and coding agents can work from a known standard instead of inventing a different layout every time.
• Portable governance: the same v7.1 rules can be applied across one site or an entire portfolio.
• Stronger trust signals: root discovery files, schema, datasets, and federation relationships create a more complete machine-readable footprint.
• Less maintenance drift: once the standard is in place, audits and automation can spot missing or stale pieces quickly.

AI discovery exposure improves when a site becomes easier to crawl, classify, and trust. v7.1 helps by giving AI systems a fast path to the most useful context. Instead of parsing an entire site from scratch, they can read the discovery files first, confirm the version, inspect the sitemap, traverse the knowledge base, and follow federation relationships to understand where the site fits.

• Manifest plus LLM summary: define the site in plain language and structured language.
• Root discovery files: keep crawl entry points in the canonical locations agents already check.
• Catalog plus datasets: expose structured assets that can be cited, indexed, and reused.
• Federation map: shows how authority and topic relationships extend beyond one isolated domain.
• Consistent version signals: help agents recognize the site as a maintained implementation rather than a partial experiment.

v7.1 kept the six required artifacts from the v7 line and tightened the operational rules around them. The important changes were practical: /robots.txt must live at the root, /sitemap.xml must live at the root, the root XML sitemap is canonical, /ai/sitemap.json is only an optional companion inventory, and v7.1-DigitalKarma.md became the portable installer brief for repeatable upgrades.

If you are trying to implement the standard, start with the Building Federation Endpoints for v7.1 guide, then use the deployment repository for the installer workflow. If you already have a live site and want proof of what is missing, run the Federation Audit first.