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Machine-readable access

current

Encode Wiki publishes the same public content in deterministic, machine-readable forms. These interfaces are generated during the static build and require no account or API key.

/api/v1/index.json enumerates every public document and article. Each record contains its stable ID, canonical page URL, clean Markdown and JSON retrieval URLs, status, tags, dates, authors, source and license metadata, headings, heading-scoped section URLs, outbound references, byte count, and SHA-256 checksum.

Retrieve an individual record using the URL in its apiUrl field. The corresponding markdownUrl returns plain Markdown with a short attribution header. Do not construct URLs from titles; follow the URLs in the index so nested identifiers remain opaque to clients.

Every document record has a sections array. Each entry identifies either the page introduction or a heading-scoped section and provides its own JSON and Markdown URLs, byte count, and checksum. Heading sections include their nested subsections so a client can retrieve a useful unit without downloading or parsing the whole page. Duplicate heading names receive stable numeric suffixes.

For example, the AV1 “Containers and HDR” section is available as /api/v1/sections/docs/codecs/video/av1/containers-and-hdr.json or attributed Markdown. Clients should discover these URLs from sections rather than constructing them.

  • /api/v1/openapi.json describes the read-only API using OpenAPI 3.1.
  • /api/v1/schema.json is the JSON Schema for an individual corpus record.
  • /api/v1/section-schema.json is the JSON Schema for a heading-scoped section record.
  • /api/v1/release.json reports the Git content version, deterministic timestamp, corpus checksum, counts, and knowledge-bundle checksums.
  • /api/v1/catalog.json publishes typed codec, implementation, container, HDR, spatial-audio, and tool entities together with evidence-backed relationships and their primary sources. Relationship tables in page Markdown are rendered from the same records.

The API path changes only for breaking contract revisions. Compare schemaVersion before parsing and contentVersion or contentChecksum to detect a new release. Page checksums cover cleaned Markdown only.

All API and text responses permit cross-origin reads and use short shared-cache lifetimes. The downloadable .gz file is an actual gzip payload, not an HTTP content-encoding wrapper. Its uncompressed and compressed checksums are in the release record.

Machine clients must retain each record’s canonicalUrl, license, sources, provenance, and modification notice when redistributing migrated material. Check the stated versions and verification dates, and treat archived content as historical. The API does not turn those records into current recommendations.