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prodid
Spec v1 · live

A barcode is not a product. prodid is.

A permanent, open identifier for every physical product. Every barcode and part number resolves to it, and every fact about it names the source that said it.

Publish your productsRead the specification
prodid.org/01/09506000134352→ /id/kq7m3v9dn2hb4t5x

Item · Acme

Trail Jacket

navy · M · sold in ⁨TR, DE⁩

  • material100% recycled polyester✓ acme.example
  • weight480 g✓ acme.example
  • nameAcme Trail Jacket, navy, Mlapsed · shop.example
What scanning the code on the label returns. The record is the specification’s own example.
Publishers state facts on their own domains, hosted or from open datasets. The index joins every code on the label to one permanent opid, and the whole index is open to download.

The problem

Four codes, one jacket, and nothing joining them.

A product gets a new barcode for every market, pack size and packaging change, and its data sits in a different system for each one. When two of them disagree, one is quietly overwritten.

prodid gives the product itself an identifier that does not change when the barcode does.

  • 09506000134352

    retail unit for DE and TR

  • another GTIN

    the same jacket in a two-pack

  • another GTIN

    next year’s packaging

  • TJ-2041-NVY-M

    manufacturer part number

One variant

9p2d4kv7mq3nbhxf

Never reused, never deleted. Every code that ever pointed here keeps working.

The model

Family, variant, item. Codes point at them; they are not them.

Each level has its own opid: 16 characters that encode nothing, so nothing about the product can make them wrong.

  1. family · 3n7k2q9vdfhb4mta

    Acme Trail Jacket

    The product as people talk about it.

  2. variant · 9p2d4kv7mq3nbhxf

    navy · size M

    One combination of colour, size and the like.

  3. item · kq7m3v9dn2hb4t5x

    Retail unit for DE and TR

    The thing that carries a barcode.

    • gtin09506000134352
    • mpnTJ-2041-NVY-M
    • skuTJ-2041-NVY-M

New packaging adds a new item with a new barcode, under the same variant and the same family. Nothing that pointed at the old one breaks.

How it works

Publish on your domain. prodid indexes it. Anyone resolves it.

  1. 01 · Publish

    Three things on your domain

    • /.well-known/prodid.json
    • /prodid/items.ndjson
    • _prodid TXT "v=prodid0; host=…"

    A discovery document, a feed with one product per line, and a DNS record that proves the domain is yours.

    How to publish →

  2. 02 · Index

    Checked, matched, attributed

    • every line validated against the schema
    • matched to an existing opid, or a new one
    • each field stored as a claim by your domain

    Retailers, registries and open datasets are sources the same way: beside the maker, never on top of it.

    How claims work →

  3. 03 · Resolve

    One URL, printed on the product

    prodid.org/01/09506000134352

    Browser → a page

    API → the JSON record

    The path is GS1 Digital Link syntax, so it can be the QR code on the label itself.

    How resolving works →
Start publishing

Claims

Every fact names its source. Disagreement stays visible.

Nothing is merged into one “truth”. When a source stops publishing, its claims are kept and marked lapsed, not deleted.

PropertyValueSourceTrustSeen
nameTrail Jacketacme.exampleverified2026-09-14
brandAcmeacme.exampleverified2026-09-14
material100% recycled polyesteracme.exampleverified2026-09-14
weight480 gacme.exampleverified2026-09-14
mediaimage · CC-BY-4.0acme.exampleverified2026-09-14
marketsTR, DEacme.exampleverified2026-09-14
nameAcme Trail Jacket, navy, Mshop.exampleunverified · lapsed2026-08-02
authoritative
Controls the domain and is confirmed as the brand owner.
verified
Proved control of a domain through DNS or its own website.
unverified
A hosted name without a domain, a dataset, or a contribution.

Who it is for

The people who make the data, and the people who need it.

Manufacturers

State your product data once, on your own domain. No reseller listing or marketplace owns the description of what you make.

Publish on your domain →

E-commerce, ERP and PIM vendors

One discovery document and one feed per merchant domain, generated from data you already hold.

Choose a route →

Developers

Resolve any code to an identifier that survives repackaging. Every fact says who said it, when, and whether that source still stands behind it.

Get the data →

On the EU Digital Product Passport. ESPR asks for a passport reachable from a data carrier on the product, and GS1 Digital Link is one of the carrier syntaxes being standardised for it. prodid is not a passport service and publishing here is not compliance with anything; it is the same groundwork: one machine-readable record per product, at a stable address you control.

Status

Where this actually stands.

Spec v1. The index and the hosted publisher run on prodid.org. Anyone can publish, on their own domain or hosted.

  • Stable

    Specification v1. It changes only by addition; anything else would be v2. A v0 discovery document is accepted until 2027-01-26 00:00 UTC. Read it and say where it is wrong.

  • Canary and one dataset

    No publisher’s catalogue is indexed yet. The index holds two sources: the project's own canary, canary.prodid.org, which proves publishing, crawling and resolving end to end, and dataset:wikidata, a bounded test import of 5 Wikidata items, unverified and under CC0-1.0.

  • By design

    The index is replaceable. The spec, the schemas, the opids and the code mappings are CC0. Each claim keeps its source’s licence. The facts live on the domains that publish them, so anyone can crawl them again and printed codes keep their meaning.

Give your products an identity that outlives the barcode.

Two files and one DNS record on your own domain, or a hosted site with no domain at all.

Publish your productsStart at publish.prodid.org →

prodid is open source. Help it grow.

Star the repository so others find it, tell us what is wrong, send a fix, or write to us here without a GitHub account.