Portable Liveables Interchange Standard

An open proposal for portable digital identities.

Imagine spending years building an AI character: giving them a name, personality, memories, relationships, appearance, and a history.

Then imagine wanting to move that character to another game, virtual world, AI service, or creative tool.

Usually, you can't take all of that with you. The character's identity and history are tied to the platform where they were created. Move to another platform, and you may have to rebuild them from scratch.

PoLiS is an attempt to solve this problem.

It defines an open package format for describing a digital entity and the information that may need to travel with it. Another platform can read the package, understand what it contains, and decide what it can use.

Identity travels. Platforms remain independent.

PoLiS calls a digital entity with an identity a Liveable.

A Liveable can be almost anything that has a persistent identity:

It does not have to think, speak, or act. A goldfish in a virtual aquarium can be a Liveable just as much as an AI bartender.

A PoLiS package can carry information such as:

These parts are optional. A flower does not need memories or a personality. A character may need several components to preserve what makes them recognizable.

PoLiS provides a shared way to package and exchange identity data. It does not force platforms to work the same way.

When a Liveable is imported, the receiving platform remains in control. It decides whether to accept the package, which parts it supports, and how the imported entity can exist in its world.

In short: PoLiS can carry a description of an entity, but it cannot carry authority over another platform.

Nor does PoLiS guarantee that a character will look or behave exactly the same everywhere. Platforms have different capabilities, rules, and AI models. Some data may not be supported or may need to be adapted.

The proposed format uses familiar, inspectable technologies:

A .polis file is a Zstandard-compressed TAR archive.

Its required manifest.json and identity.json files live at the archive root. Optional component JSON files are grouped under components/, and binary resources under assets/.

No proprietary runtime is needed just to inspect a package.

This repository contains the public proposal, draft validation schemas, and example Liveables:

PoLiS is an early proposal, not a finalized or ratified standard. The specification and draft schemas are published for review. Package rules and schemas may change before a stable release.

We want developers, world builders, AI researchers, digital artists, and anyone working with persistent digital entities to challenge the assumptions, find gaps, and help shape the proposal.

When proposing a change, please indicate whether it affects:

The goal is to make the proposal clearer and more useful through open discussion and review.

The specification (SPECIFICATION.md), repository documentation, and JSON Schemas in schemas/ are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Copyright © 2026 Gene Semerenko. Published by FunnyFiction.

Example Liveable data and media assets must carry their own explicit license or usage permissions. The specification license does not grant rights to those assets, trademarks, or future software implementations. Any future reference implementation source code will be licensed separately under Apache License 2.0.

FunnyFiction is the publishing home for PoLiS. It is currently an independent project organization; this does not imply that a separately registered legal entity exists.

The project founder and original author is Gene Semerenko. The governance process may evolve as the project and community grow, with changes documented publicly.

PoLiS is an open standard proposal published by FunnyFiction.

Identity travels. Platforms remain independent.