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

In my case I do not need anything from YAML other than the authoring syntax which can hold JSON so building around JSON is no problem and should be no problem as the primitives should work for any tree structured document.

The improvements needed are in how properties are mapped in a streaming friendly way that is compact in file and allows for co-locating entities. I feel that the file boundary must go away so one can compose a whole graph in one file or just one node.

Christoph


On Tue, Feb 24, 2026, at 8:07 AM, thomas@pellissier-tanon.fr wrote:
> 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/
>>