KON (Key Object Notation) is a clean, minimal, and human-readable data format designed for structured key-value data. It offers a modern alternative to JSON, TOML, and YAML by focusing on readability, simplicity, and consistency, while being easy for both humans and machines to parse.
“KON — Lightweight. Readable. Structured.”
KON is a general-purpose data notation format based on intuitive key: value semantics and natural object hierarchies. It’s designed to be:
- Readable – Designed for humans first, with minimal visual clutter.
- Nestable – Supports deeply structured data through objects and arrays.
- Typed – Supports primitives like strings, numbers, booleans, and null.
- Consistent – No ambiguous syntax, no surprising edge cases.
- Extensible – Ideal for configs, serialization, and messaging formats.
name: "KON"
version: 1.0
features: ["readable", "nestable", "lightweight"]
author:
name: "Wylan Shoemaker"
website: "https://example.com"
settings:
debug: true
max_threads: 8
timeout: 30.5
| Feature | KON | JSON | YAML | TOML |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human-readable | Yes | Moderate | Yes | Yes |
| No quotes for keys | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Simple syntax | Yes | Yes | Inconsistent | Yes |
| Fully nestable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Designed for configs | Yes | Verbose | Yes | Yes |
| Schema-friendly | Optional | External | Limited | Yes |
- Application and tool configuration files
- Human-editable structured data
- Static site metadata
- Inter-process communication and structured logging
- Build and deployment pipelines
A full parser, specification, and developer tooling for KON is currently in development. To contribute or follow progress, visit the GitHub repository.
A complete formal specification for KON, including grammar rules, type system, escaping rules, and edge cases, will be published in the spec/ directory.
- Syntax highlighting for major editors (VSCode, JetBrains, Sublime)
- Language support in Python, Rust, JavaScript, and C++
- KON CLI for linting, formatting, and validation
- JSON-to-KON and YAML-to-KON converters
KON is open-source and released under the MIT License.
Created by Wylan Shoemaker, inspired by the best parts of existing formats and built with clarity and practicality in mind.