Open standard · Apache 2.0
FLUID.
Federated · Labeled · Universal · Interoperable · Declarative.
The open standard for enterprise data products in the agentic era.
The six pillars
Five letters. One principle.
Five principles spell FLUID — and the sixth pillar, data treated as a product, is the one that underwrites them all.
Federated Ownership
Domain experts own their data. Accountability lives where the knowledge lives.
Labeled & Discoverable
Rich metadata. Agents find it, understand it, trust it.
Universal Language
One operational language for data, semantics and quality — portable across every platform.
Interoperable Standards
Shared contracts and access patterns. Data products snap together — no point-to-point glue.
Declarative
Declare the outcome. The compiler does the rest.
Data as Product
Defined owner, contract, version, SLO, support. Treated like a product.
Three tiers · Data-Mesh-aligned
SDP → ADP → CDP.
Source-aligned → Aggregate → Consumer-aligned. Bound to the FLUID contract.
Raw with context
SDP
Source-aligned
Ingested directly from a source system. Lineage and metadata attached at entry.
Composable
ADP
Aggregate
Domain-cleaned, entity-resolved, contract-bound. The building blocks.
Purpose-built
CDP
Consumer-aligned
Designed for a specific business outcome. Agent-ready by default.
iAPIs
Agents can read this.
Intelligent Agentic Protocol Interfaces. Not a conventional API — a semantic interface agents understand by intent, not just by name. Discover, evaluate, act — no human in the loop.
Open source
The standard belongs
to everyone.
forge-cli and the FLUID standard are Apache-2.0 licensed — free to use, fork, audit and ship, forever. We build it in the open because a protocol the whole industry can trust is worth far more than one any single company owns.
Apache License
Version 2.0 · January 2004
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent grant
- Private use
forge-cli · the FLUID standard
Apache 2.0 — no asterisks
Permissive and irrevocable. Use it in anything, commercial or not — no permission, no royalties, no rug-pull.
No lock-in, ever
Stop trusting us tomorrow? Fork it. The contract format and the compiler are yours to keep and run.
Built with the community
Issues, PRs and proposals welcome. The roadmap is public — the conversation happens in the open.
FAQ
The FLUID standard, answered.
What is the FLUID standard?
FLUID is an open standard for defining enterprise data products. The name captures five principles — Federated, Labeled, Universal, Interoperable, Declarative — expressed as a versioned contract that both humans and machines can read.
What does FLUID stand for?
Federated ownership, Labeled and discoverable, Universal language, Interoperable standards, and Declarative governance — the five pillars that make a data product agent-ready.
Is FLUID open source?
Yes. FLUID and the forge-cli compiler are licensed under Apache 2.0 — free to use, fork, audit and ship, with no lock-in and no paid tier.
How does FLUID relate to ODCS and ODPS?
FLUID stays interoperable with other open specs: forge-cli emits the Open Data Contract Standard (ODCS) and the Open Data Product Specification (ODPS) from a FLUID contract, and imports them too. You model once.
Do we need to replace our data platform to adopt FLUID?
No. FLUID is a contract layer that compiles to native services on whichever cloud you already run — Snowflake, AWS, Google Cloud or local. Your platform stays; FLUID adds the data-product layer on top.
Build on the standard.
FLUID is open, versioned, and Apache 2.0. Read the spec and write your first contract.