Digital Karma Federation Architecture

1. Discovery layer: the manifest, LLM summary, root crawler rules, and sitemap show where to start.
2. Meaning layer: the catalog and rendered Schema.org graph explain what the site and its content collections represent.
3. Relationship layer: /ai/federation.json and optional mapping files show how the site connects to real peers.
4. Proof layer: /ai/rendered-schema.json records whether every canonical sitemap page exposed the complete catalog Dataset graph.

The v7 line documents deeper federation intelligence in four stages:

1. v01 listings: raw inventory of known members.
2. v02 clusters: groups sites by role such as authority node, support site, tool, or commercial property.
3. v03 relationships: records how the sites reference and support each other.
4. v04 propagation: describes how trust, discovery, and network value can flow across the map.

Not every site needs the full mapping layer, but the model becomes powerful when a portfolio grows beyond a few isolated domains.

DigitalKarmaWeb.com publishes the standard and can host an optional registry, but it does not gate membership. A site can implement the seven required public artifacts, rendered Dataset contract, and audit proof independently. That keeps owners in control of their properties while they still benefit from a shared standard.

Federation architecture gives owners more than a technical diagram. It helps related properties reinforce each other, makes AI discovery paths more intentional, supports cleaner audits, and turns a set of websites into a more understandable network. For agencies, publishers, portfolio owners, and product families, that extra structure can compound into stronger coverage and better machine-readable authority over time.