One resource, one permanent RID
Every canonical resource has one RID, independent of its meaning, hosting location, and current owner. It survives renaming, migration, transfer, and the end of the applications that use it.
About RSM ID
Shared identity, without centralizing ownership or authority
RSM ID is the universal identity infrastructure of the Regenerative Systems Model. It gives physical, biological, economic, organizational, scientific, and digital resources permanent identities that independently governed systems can recognize, name, and resolve.
Purpose
Why a shared identity layer is needed
The same parcel of land, the same processing facility, the same organization appear in many systems at once: public registers, farm and factory software, lenders and insurers, research databases, certification schemes, and supply-chain platforms. Each system names the object in its own way. Connecting what they know depends on fragile matching of names, addresses, and codes — work that is repeated, error-prone, and rarely shared.
RSM ID exists to give such resources a permanent identity that any participating system can recognize. It adopts lessons from persistent identifier systems such as DOI and extends them beyond documents and datasets to the resources of our physical, biological, economic, and digital world — land, living systems, facilities, materials, organizations, observations, commitments, and outcomes — and to the sovereign Semantic Spaces that describe them.
Vision and mission
A common identity for everything we need to understand, connect, and act upon
The vision is a world in which independently governed systems can refer to the same real-world object with confidence, discover what is authoritatively known about it, and understand what it is — without any single system holding all of the information or all of the authority.
The mission of RSM ID is to make identity a foundational infrastructure service: one permanent identity for each resource, registered names under delegated authority, and resolution to independently governed representations — connected through the shared semantics of the Regenerative Systems Model.
Principles
The commitments that shape RSM ID
These summarize the design principles of the RSM ID specification. They are commitments about how identity behaves, not features of a particular product.
Names are governed, not identity
Structured RRNs give explicit namespace and issuance context without replacing the RID. Names can be succeeded; they are never reassigned.
Authority is delegated and verified
Registered authorities issue independently within delegated namespaces. A host that advertises a resource does not thereby become its authority.
Knowledge stays where it belongs
The registry holds identity; each Semantic Space holds its own content, revisions, and relationships. Official, scientific, and commercial records stay with the institutions responsible for them.
Identity is not ownership or access
Issuing an RID confers no legal ownership, consent, or right to disclose. Resolution enforces privacy, access control, and auditability.
No merging by resemblance
Two records are the same resource only when they share an RID or a verified equivalence supported by authority and evidence — never because they look alike.
The RSM foundation
RSM provides canonical semantics. RSM ID provides identity and resolution.
The Regenerative Systems Model (RSM) is a semantic grammar for representing living, economic, and institutional systems: what exists, how things relate, what is observed, what is committed, and what changes. It deliberately keeps a small set of foundational kinds, so that a farm, a watershed, a cooperative, and a grain lot are each understood as the kind of thing they actually are.
| Kind | Represents |
|---|---|
rsm:Person | Human individual |
rsm:Organization | Durable institutional or collective entity |
rsm:Community | Durable structure of belonging or shared context |
rsm:LivingSystem | Biological or ecological system capable of state and change |
rsm:Place | Spatially meaningful location or region |
rsm:Facility | Bounded physical or operational capability-bearing system |
rsm:Material | Physical matter whose identity, state, or transformation matters |
rsm:Instrument | Legal, financial, policy, technical, measurement, or representational construct |
rsm:DigitalAgent | Software entity capable of bounded machine action |
rsm:Formation | Identity-bearing arrangement that has assembled around a purpose |
RSM ID builds on this foundation and belongs within RSM Core. Where RSM says what a resource means, RSM ID provides the permanent identity that says which resource is meant, the registered names under which it was issued, and the resolution that leads to authoritative information about it.
Around it sit the systems that consume its contracts: Locus, the proposed engine that serves each Semantic Space; Atlas, the proposed explorer of federated relationships; and applications such as Wellzai and Musewoods. None of them redefines identity.
Read the RSM Subject Model · Canonical Model & Protocol · RSM ID specification
Clear boundaries
What RSM ID is not
- Not another identifier type. RSM ID is the identity system. The identifier is the RID; RRNs and RSNs are names in the same system.
- Not a universal database. RSM ID does not collect the world’s information into one repository. Records stay with the Semantic Spaces and systems responsible for them.
- Not a URL shortener or link service. A web identifier is one representation of an RID. Resolution verifies authority and applies policy; it is not a redirect.
- Not a knowledge graph, blockchain, or consensus platform. It provides identity and resolution that graphs and other systems can use.
- Not a product owned by one company or application. RSM Core is the standards authority and 451 Labs the initial steward. Wellzai, Musewoods, and others are consumers of the identity contract.
- Not a replacement for official identifiers. Parcel numbers, company registrations, DOIs, and ORCID iDs remain authoritative for what they identify. RSM ID relates to them with evidence; it never treats them as RSM-issued RIDs.
- Not a login or authentication service. Identifying a resource is different from signing someone in. An RID is not proof of possession, ownership, or authority.
Where things stand
An early, open foundation
RSM ID is at an early stage, and this site aims to be precise about what exists today. Its specification and reference design were proposed on 9 October 2026; nothing they describe is yet deployed.
- RID, RRN, RSN, identity records, and the resolution protocolDefined by specification
- Machine-readable RRN grammar (ABNF) and conformance suiteNot available yet
- Reference implementation: identity library, registry, resolver, CLIProposed reference architecture
- Identity Registry and the 451 prefixProposed reference architecture
- Public resolver at rmsid.orgProposed reference architecture
- RSM, Wellzai, and Musewoods Semantic Spaces on Locus, explored through AtlasProposed reference architecture
- RID, RRN, and RSN syntax checks on this websiteImplemented in this repository
- Resolver on this websiteDemonstrated on this site
- Namespace and identity registration for organizationsNot available yet
Institutional intent
The specification names RSM Core as its standards authority and 451 Labs as its initial steward. RSM ID is intended as neutral, long-term infrastructure — open to individuals, communities, institutions, and companies, and not tied to any single application or hosting provider.
Persistence depends on operational stewardship as much as on syntax: registry continuity, namespace succession, backup and recovery, and preservation of retired records (Doc 08 §16.4). Those procedures have not yet been established, and this site does not claim that they have.