Roadmap · Updated August 2026
Earn credibility one proof at a time.
WARD starts as a small origin gateway with a precise contract. The path to a useful protocol is independent implementations, verified identities, interoperability, and real publisher pilots—not a large speculative platform built in advance.
Now · Gateway Alpha
The first complete function
✓ implemented in alpha
Policy → decision
ward.json defaults and path rules resolve to allow, observe, or redact.
✓ implemented in alpha
Identity confidence
Every detected crawler is labelled claimed, verified, or mismatch.
✓ implemented in alpha
Origin enforcement
Marked values can be absent from the complete server-rendered response.
✓ implemented in alpha
Reproducible proof
Conformance tests and a canary compare human and crawler responses.
Next gates
Reviewed 0.2 release
Publish the alpha contract, registry corrections, decision API, middleware callbacks, and migration notes after independent diff review.
Acceptance evidence: npm package digest, 64+ tests, typecheck/build, package canary
Verified identity adapter
Enable provider-published IP-range verification at a trusted origin boundary and retain only minimal evidence.
Acceptance evidence: verified and mismatch canaries using fixed provider fixtures
One independent implementation
Have a second stack consume the same policy and pass the same decision vectors without importing the TypeScript library.
Acceptance evidence: public conformance report with matching outputs
One measured publisher pilot
Run advisory mode first, agree on protected fields, then enable narrow server enforcement with rollback.
Acceptance evidence: before/after origin responses and non-synthetic receipts
Interoperability before standardisation
WARD's internal decision model should accept established and emerging rights-reservation signals rather than demand a new vocabulary everywhere. The immediate work is adapters and test vectors; a formal standards proposal only makes sense after more than one implementation exists.
Explicitly not on the alpha critical path
Deferred
Crawler certification
Requires governance and reliable identity proof first.
Deferred
Central rights registry
Adds infrastructure and authority before the local gateway is proven.
Deferred
Payments and WARD-Pay
A separate economic experiment after access decisions and receipts are trustworthy.
The best contribution is a second implementation.
We also welcome a narrow pilot, crawler verification evidence, legal review, and public-interest funding for the open layer.