@profullstack/openprofile

One reader and writer for OpenProfile.md, the Markdown profile file for people and agents, with its Broadcast and Guest sections. Every house app that serves a profile reads, renders, corrects and de-duplicates it through this package, so a profile means the same thing on p0dcasters, OutreachGraph, rssamplifier, nichedb and myna.

npm i @profullstack/openprofile

Read

import { parseOpenProfile, accounts, topics, kindOf, emoji, pronouns, web, broadcasts, guest } from "@profullstack/openprofile";

const doc = parseOpenProfile(markdown);
doc.name;                 // the `#` heading, or null
doc.identity;             // [{ key: "Kind", value: "person" }, ...] as written
doc.headline;             // the one prose line after the identity block
doc.sections;             // [{ title: "Find me", name: "accounts", body: "- ..." }]
accounts(doc);            // [{ url, label }] the URL is the identity
topics(doc);              // ["computing history", "mathematics"]
kindOf(doc);              // "person" | "agent" | "organization" | null
emoji(doc);               // "🔭": the person's mark, first grapheme; emoji(doc, resolve) for :shortcodes:
pronouns(doc);            // "she/her" as written, or null (never inferred)
web(doc);                 // the home page, written as Web, Website, Homepage or Site
broadcasts(doc);          // one keyed object per show, `###` groups split apart
guest(doc);               // the Guest keys, or null

Emoji, Pronouns and Web are default fields since OpenProfile 0.4. identityValue, identityMap, overlays, merges and de-duplication treat Website, Homepage and Site as Web (canonicalKey, IDENTITY_ALIASES), and makeOpenProfile writes them as Web.

Nothing is required and nothing is dropped. An unknown identity key, an unknown section and a second prose paragraph all survive a parse and a render. Section titles are kept verbatim and normalised separately (Find me is accounts), as rule 4 says.

Write

import { makeOpenProfile, keyedSection, listSection, renderOpenProfile } from "@profullstack/openprofile";

const md = renderOpenProfile(makeOpenProfile({
  name: "Ada Lovelace",
  identity: { Kind: "person", Web: "https://ada.example", Avatar: image },
  headline: "Host of The Analytical Engine.",
  sections: [
    listSection("Accounts", ["https://bsky.app/profile/ada.example"]),
    listSection("Topics", categories),
    keyedSection("Broadcast", { Show: title, Kind: "podcast", Feed: feedUrl, Listen: page, Topics: categories.join(", ") }),
  ],
}));

Absence is unstated: a null or empty value is not written, an empty section is not written. Known sections come out in the spec's order.

Let the person correct it

A generated profile is the app's claim. The person it is about corrects it with an overlay, and the overlay is the same shape over the API, the CLI, the MCP tool and the web form:

import { applyOverrides, overridesFromDocument, mergeOverrides } from "@profullstack/openprofile";

const shown = applyOverrides(generated, overrides);
// overrides = { name?, headline?, prose?, identity?: { Email: null, Location: "London" },
//               sections?: { guest: "- **Available**: yes", colophon: "none" } }

The owner's identity keys, headline and sections win; a section the owner did not touch is still generated; a section written as the single word none is removed. A whole edited file becomes an overlay with overridesFromDocument(markdown, generated), so PUT of Markdown and PUT of JSON store the same thing. mergeOverrides(base, patch) is the partial update.

De-duplicate and merge

import { identityKeys, samePerson, mergeProfiles, normaliseUrl } from "@profullstack/openprofile";

identityKeys(doc);        // ["web:ada.example", "account:github.com/ada", "email:[email protected]"]
samePerson(a, b);         // true when they share one key; a shared name never counts
mergeProfiles([a, b]);    // first document's identity wins, Accounts and Topics unioned,
                          // Broadcast sections kept apart as `### <show>` groups

normaliseUrl lowercases the host, drops www., the scheme, tracking keys, the fragment and the trailing slash, so HTTPS://www.GitHub.com/Ada/?utm_source=x and github.com/ada are one key. It never throws on a malformed percent-escape: a stray % is literal (so /%draft% and /%25draft%25 are one key), and a path that will not decode as UTF-8 (%FF) keeps its escapes.

Constants

MEDIA_TYPE (text/markdown; charset=utf-8), LINK_REL (openprofile), WELL_KNOWN_PATH (/.well-known/openprofile.md), EDIT_SCOPE (openprofile:edit, the OpenAccess scope an app asks for to edit a profile on the person's behalf).

License

MIT.