Re: YAML-LD: A Missed Opportunity for a "Lightweight JSON-LD"

Really glad to see this conversation happening!

Please take some time to review the current draft of YAML-LD at https://w3c.github.io/yaml-ld/

There is already a streaming section, fwiw.

Also, the WG published a Streaming JSON-LD Note ages ago: https://www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11-streaming/

It would be great to learn more about where those may or may not be working for your use cases.

Cheers!
Benjamin

________________________________
From: thomas@pellissier-tanon.fr <thomas@pellissier-tanon.fr>
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2026 8:07:47 AM
To: Filip Kolarik <filip26@gmail.com>
Cc: JSON-LD Working Group <public-json-ld-wg@w3.org>; Christoph <christoph@christophdorn.com>; JSON for Linking Data Community Group <public-linked-json@w3.org>
Subject: Re: YAML-LD: A Missed Opportunity for a "Lightweight JSON-LD"

Hi Filip,

Big +1 a simpler streaming friendly variant of JSON-LD would be amazing.

I am not sure YAML-LD is the good place for that. YAML is a very complicated language with non-streaming friendly features like anchors. Building something on top of JSON by removing JSON-LD features seems a better approach to me.

Thomas

Le mardi 24 février 2026 à 03:12, Christoph <christoph@christophdorn.com> a écrit :
Hi Filip,

I have struggled with JSON-LD. I would be interested in looking at a refreshed proposal for YAML-LD to see how it fits with my use-cases. Happy to provide a second implementation in TypeScript to validate.

Christoph


On Mon, Feb 23, 2026, at 5:13 PM, Filip Kolarik wrote:
Dear JSON-LD Community and Working Group,

Having some experience implementing JSON-LD processor and encountering issues that many users face, I wanted to share some thoughts on potential directions for a lightweight alternative.

I see YAML-LD as a missed opportunity, not in syntax, but in design. A simpler variant of the JSON-LD context, let's say a subset of JSON-LD context expressivity, could enable straightforward, intuitive syntax, faster processing, and even better support for streaming. This would make it more approachable for developers and easier to use in constrained environments.

Isomorphic mapping would also greatly help ensure contexts can be processed safely and efficiently.

In practice, most use cases can function without features like scoped or inline contexts, reverse properties, nesting, etc. Simplifying in this way could drastically reduce implementation complexity and lower the learning curve for developers and users.

Please don’t let this opportunity slip by. What is the current value of YAML-LD? Is it mainly syntactic sugar? I would be very interested to hear the community’s and working group’s perspective.

Best regards,
Filip
https://www.linkedin.com/in/filipkolarik/