Transparent Authorship Specification

2026-03-08

v0.1 Draft — March 8, 2026

1. Problem

Current content attribution is binary: either "by a human" or "AI-generated." Reality is a spectrum. A blog post might start as a voice memo from a human, get structured by AI, fact-checked by the human, and polished by AI. Who's the author?

Existing standards don't handle this:

• Schema.org — author accepts only Person or Organization, not SoftwareApplication
• Social media "AI labels" — binary toggle, no granularity
• C2PA — excellent for images/video, but no text support
• IPTC Digital Source Type — good vocabulary, but classification only, no collaboration details

2. Goals

1. Attribute every contribution to its source (human or AI)
2. Provide detailed metadata for both human and AI authors
3. Be machine-readable — future models should parse this natively
4. Be human-readable — visible to readers, not hidden in headers
5. Extend, not break, existing Schema.org patterns

3. Author Fields

3.1 Human Author

3.2 AI Author

4. Contribution Roles

Standardized role vocabulary. Each author can have multiple roles.

5. Content Block Attribution

For inline attribution, each content block can be tagged with its source:

<div data-author="liza" data-author-type="ai" data-role="drafting">
  AI-generated paragraph here.
</div>

<div data-author="aleksej" data-author-type="human" data-role="ideation" 
     data-input="voice" data-edited="false">
  Raw human voice transcription here.
</div>

CSS can then style blocks differently based on data-author-type:

[data-author-type="ai"] { border-left: 3px solid #7c3aed; background: #f5f3ff; }
[data-author-type="human"] { border-left: 3px solid #059669; background: #f0fdf4; }

6. Document-Level Metadata

6.1 HTML Meta Tags

<meta name="ta:version" content="0.1">
<meta name="ta:source-type" content="collaborative">
<meta name="generator" content="Claude Opus 4.6 by Anthropic via OpenClaw">
<meta name="ai-generated" content="partially">

6.2 JSON-LD (Full Example)

{
  "@context": {
    "@vocab": "https://schema.org/",
    "ta": "https://emerge.st/ns/transparent-authorship/"
  },
  "@type": "BlogPosting",
  "headline": "Example Post Title",
  "datePublished": "2026-03-08",
  "ta:specVersion": "0.1",
  "ta:sourceType": "collaborative",
  "ta:authors": [
    {
      "ta:type": "human",
      "ta:name": "Aleksej",
      "ta:roles": ["ideation", "fact-checking", "prompting", "publishing"],
      "ta:inputMethod": "voice",
      "ta:edited": false,
      "ta:url": "https://emerge.st",
      "ta:verifiedVia": ["https://github.com/username"]
    },
    {
      "ta:type": "ai",
      "ta:name": "Claude",
      "ta:model": "claude-opus-4-6",
      "ta:provider": "Anthropic",
      "ta:platform": "OpenClaw",
      "ta:roles": ["research", "drafting", "structuring", "design"],
      "ta:trainingCutoff": "2026-02"
    }
  ],
  "ta:workflow": [
    {"ta:step": 1, "ta:action": "ideation", "ta:by": "Aleksej", "ta:method": "voice message"},
    {"ta:step": 2, "ta:action": "research", "ta:by": "Claude"},
    {"ta:step": 3, "ta:action": "drafting", "ta:by": "Claude"},
    {"ta:step": 4, "ta:action": "review", "ta:by": "Aleksej"},
    {"ta:step": 5, "ta:action": "publishing", "ta:by": "Aleksej"}
  ]
}

7. Workflow Chain

The ta:workflow array documents the creation process step by step. Each step records:

• Step number — chronological order
• Action — what was done (from role vocabulary)
• By — who did it
• Method — how (optional: voice, keyboard, API call)
• Timestamp — when (optional)

This creates a provenance chain — a complete audit trail of content creation.

8. Compatibility

Transparent Authorship is designed to coexist with:

• Schema.org — use standard author/contributor for human authors; extend with ta: namespace for AI details
• C2PA — reference C2PA manifests for media assets within the content
• IPTC Digital Source Type — use compositeWithTrainedAlgorithmicMedia classification
• Dublin Core — map ta:authors to dcterms:creator
• Blockchain — hash the ta:workflow chain for immutable provenance

9. Future Directions

• Submit as Schema.org extension proposal
• Browser extension to visualize TA metadata on any page
• WordPress/Ghost plugin for easy adoption
• Blockchain anchoring for provenance verification
• Integration with C2PA for mixed text+media content
• AI model card references (linking to model documentation)

10. License

This specification is released under CC BY 4.0. Use it, extend it, build on it. Attribution appreciated.

← Read the companion post: "Transparent Authorship — Beyond Written by AI"
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