Open Knowledge Format: AI Knowledge as Markdown Files | heise online

"Google Cloud has introduced Open Knowledge Format (OKF), an open specification designed to make context knowledge usable across platforms for AI systems and agents. The format is aimed at companies that want to centrally provide metadata, documentation, runbooks, or technical definitions for AI use. Google has already integrated support for OKF into its Knowledge Catalog.

With the format, Google is adopting an approach that has become widespread among AI agent developers in recent months. Instead of repeatedly having agents search for the same information from wikis, data catalogs, or documentation, teams store their knowledge in a structured way as a collection of Markdown files....

While [other] approaches use similar building blocks – Markdown files, metadata fields, and cross-references – they usually remain limited to individual teams, tools, or providers. This makes it difficult to reuse knowledge between different AI systems. This is precisely where Google comes in: OKF is intended to define the necessary conventions that allow different tools to read and write the same knowledge bases – without a translation layer and without proprietary vendor SDKs....

Google explicitly describes OKF as a format, not a platform. The specification is intended to function independently of cloud providers, databases, AI models, or agent frameworks. The developers have deliberately kept the standard lean: only a type field is mandatory; users can define all other structures and metadata themselves. Thus, OKF only dictates interoperability, not a uniform content model."