Standards

Every published specification, schema, and protocol that VC Deal Flow Signal implements end-to-end. Each entry links to the canonical spec and to the surface on this site that exposes it. We do not declare conformance to standards we do not implement.

Why this page exists. E-E-A-T signals are not just bylines and headshots. They are verifiable, machine-checkable conformance to the standards that the web of data is built on. Every row below is a public spec you can validate this site against — open the spec URL, hit the "applied at" endpoint, and check the output.

Structured data

Standard	Specification	Applied at
Schema.org (JSON-LD) WebSite + Organization + Person + SoftwareApplication on every page; 40+ specialized types across pSEO templates (Dataset, FAQPage, ScholarlyArticle, Course, ClaimReview, Speakable).	schema.org/	Site-wide @graph
JSON-LD 1.1 Stable @id anchors so cross-page references collapse into the same entity in any consumer's graph.	www.w3.org/TR/json-ld11/	All <script type="application/ld+json"> blocks
Speakable Specification Voice-assistant-friendly summaries scoped to h1, h2, and [data-speakable] selectors.	schema.org/SpeakableSpecification	Pillar + answer pages

Citation & scholarly

Standard	Specification	Applied at
Highwire Press citation_* meta 13 citation_* + 6 DC.* meta tags per finding for Google Scholar indexing as a citable subdivision of the SSRN paper.	scholar.google.com/intl/en/scholar/inclusion.html	/research/* pages
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set DC.title / DC.creator / DC.identifier / DC.publisher / DC.subject / DC.rights on every research finding.	www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dces/	Research findings + dataset descriptors
BibTeX, RIS, APA, MLA, Chicago Five canonical citation formats plus AI-attribution template, all served as plain text.	www.bibtex.org/Format/	Citation guide + per-page citation block
DOI (Digital Object Identifier) DOI 10.2139/ssrn.6606558 registered through Crossref; resolves to the canonical PDF.	www.doi.org/the-identifier/what-is-a-doi/	SSRN paper
ORCID iD Persistent author identifier 0009-0002-2222-4112 for The Data Nerd; used in JSON-LD Person.identifier.	info.orcid.org/what-is-orcid/	Author identity

Open data & FAIR

Standard	Specification	Applied at
FAIR Data Principles Findable (Wikidata + Crossref + OpenAlex); Accessible (HTTPS + CSV + JSONL + JSON-LD); Interoperable (Schema.org + DCAT 3); Reusable (CC BY 4.0 + provenance).	www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/	Dataset distribution
DCAT 3 DataCatalog + Dataset + Distribution + DataDownload typed entries with dcat: + dcterms: cross-vocabulary.	www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat-3/	/.well-known/dataset.json
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 CC BY 4.0 declared on every distribution surface and in every JSON-LD license: field.	creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	Dataset, Q&A corpus, research findings
DataCite Schema 4.5 Dataset deposit registered with DataCite via Zenodo; receives a DataCite DOI.	schema.datacite.org/meta/kernel-4.5/	Zenodo deposit

API & agents

Standard	Specification	Applied at
OpenAPI 3.1 Full spec for every public endpoint; consumed by Postman, Insomnia, Swagger UI, Bruno, and AI agents.	spec.openapis.org/oas/v3.1.0	/api/openapi.json + /.well-known/openapi.json
Model Context Protocol (MCP) Live HTTP MCP server, Smithery-verified at Quality 98/100. Five tools (search, sector, trending, methodology, profile) free forever.	modelcontextprotocol.io/specification	/api/mcp/rpc + /.well-known/mcp.json
A2A Protocol (Agent2Agent) AgentCard discovery endpoint and JSON-RPC stub conforming to the A2A v0.1 spec.	a2aproject.dev/	/api/a2a + /.well-known/agent-card.json
llms.txt Three layers — index, full corpus, per-pillar segments — so retrieval pipelines can grab as much or as little as they need.	llmstxt.org/	/llms.txt + /llms-full.txt + /llms/[pillar]
ai.txt + ai-policy.json Per-bot machine-readable allow/deny policy; explicit allowlist for 25+ AI crawlers.	site.spawning.ai/spawning-ai-txt	/ai.txt + /.well-known/ai-policy.json
OpenSearch Description Format Browser address-bar search engine descriptor; also referenced from <link rel="search">.	www.opensearch.org/Specifications/OpenSearch/1.1	/opensearch.xml

Web platform

Standard	Specification	Applied at
Sitemaps Protocol 0.9 Sitemap index + per-section paginated sitemaps; News-Sitemap variant at /news-sitemap.xml.	www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html	/sitemap.xml + /sitemap/[id]
robots.txt (RFC 9309) Named-allowlist for 25+ AI bots; sitemap pointers for both apex and signals subdomain.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309	/robots.txt
RSS 2.0 + JSON Feed 1.1 Both XML RSS and modern JSON Feed; LLM ingestion pipelines prefer JSON Feed.	www.jsonfeed.org/version/1.1/	/feed.xml + /feed.json
ISO 8601 (date/time) All timestamps emitted in ISO 8601 with explicit UTC offset.	www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html	All datePublished / dateModified / lastmod fields

Identity & federation

Standard	Specification	Applied at
WebFinger (RFC 7033) JRD descriptor enables Mastodon, Lemmy, and IndieWeb crawlers to resolve canonical entity metadata.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7033	/.well-known/webfinger
NodeInfo 2.1 Federated-graph discovery for the fediverse. Identifies the site's protocol and software footprint.	nodeinfo.diaspora.software/protocol.html	/.well-known/nodeinfo
IndieWeb rel=me Reciprocal identity verification across ORCID, Wikidata, X, GitHub, LinkedIn, npm, Telegram.	indieweb.org/rel-me	Site-wide <link rel="me">
Wikidata Q-ID Q139376302 with sameAs cross-graph; primary canonical identity in JSON-LD Organization.sameAs.	www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Introduction	Cross-graph @id reference
host-meta (RFC 6415) Site metadata document; enables clients to resolve canonical URIs for the host.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6415	/.well-known/host-meta + host-meta.json

Operations & trust

Standard	Specification	Applied at
security.txt (RFC 9116) Security disclosure contact + canonical URL + preferred languages + expiry.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9116	/.well-known/security.txt
traffic-advice Origin-policy hint to private-prefetch proxies (Chrome's Privacy Sandbox).	github.com/buettner/private-prefetch-proxy/blob/main/traffic-advice.md	/.well-known/traffic-advice
OAuth 2.0 Authorization Server Metadata (RFC 8414) Server metadata document for clients to discover OAuth endpoints and capabilities.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8414	/.well-known/oauth-authorization-server
Change Password URL Well-Known (RFC 8615) Standard discovery endpoint that lets password managers route users to the change-password flow.	www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615	/.well-known/change-password

How to verify

Pick a row above and open the "Specification" link to read the canonical spec.
Open the "Applied at" URL and inspect the raw output (Schema.org JSON-LD validates at validator.schema.org; OpenAPI at editor.swagger.io; sitemaps at xml-sitemaps validator).
If anything fails to validate, open an issue on the public GitHub repository or email signal@gitdealflow.com. Documented fixes go in the public corrections log.