DEL — Digital Existence Layer is an open standard for the structural layer of digital existence.
DEL defines the minimal infrastructure a modern website needs in order to be found, understood, trusted, distributed, and eventually operated by humans, search engines, generative AI systems, and autonomous agents.
Current specification: DEL Standard Draft v0.1.0 — under active development, not yet a final standard.
Main repository: digital-existence-layer/standard
- Technical Presence
- Semantic Clarity
- AI Readability
- Trust Signals
- Distribution Readiness
- Agentic Readiness
The pillars are conceptually stable; the checks inside them evolve with the web. The normative definitions live in the specification.
DEL was initiated by Hernan Capucci as part of the broader Existence Compiler research and tooling ecosystem, and is maintained as an independent open standard.
No individual, company, product, or implementation has privileged status within DEL conformance. The standard is governed by its published specification, rule sets, and RFC process.
- standard — the canonical DEL specification, rule set, governance model, and RFC archive.
