About SHAMIL™

Open Knowledge Standard for Entity Representation

SHAMIL™ is an open standard for representing entities as structured, machine-readable knowledge graph nodes.
It defines a six-part notation:
Subject · Hierarchy · Attribute · Method · Interaction · Link
This notation provides a consistent and deterministic way to describe entities across the web in a form that is readable by systems capable of processing JSON-LD structured data.

Purpose

The modern information environment lacks a stable method for representing entities with verifiable structure.
Entities — organisations, people, products, concepts, and places — are described inconsistently across websites, search engines, and AI systems. This results in ambiguity, misattribution, and loss of structural meaning.
SHAMIL™ addresses this problem by providing:
a standardised entity grammar
a machine-readable JSON-LD representation
explicit relationships between entities
a consistent method for linking entities across systems
The aim is to make entity representation:
structured
verifiable
interoperable
reproducible

What SHAMIL™ Defines

SHAMIL™ is a notation standard.
It defines:
how an entity is structured
how it is classified
how its properties are expressed
how it relates to other entities
how it is linked to external systems
The standard is vocabulary-agnostic.
It does not depend on Schema.org or any external ontology.
Vocabulary layers such as Schema.org are added through extensions.

How SHAMIL™ Is Used

A SHAMIL™ entity is expressed as a JSON-LD file.
Each entity:
has a canonical URI
is stored as a file named [entity-name]-shamil.jsonld
can be embedded in a webpage
can be discovered and processed by AI systems and knowledge graph processors
SHAMIL™ entities form structured knowledge graphs through explicit relationships defined in the Interaction component.

Governance

SHAMIL™ is developed within the Search Sciences™ Research Programme at Younis Group.
The standard is maintained as an open standard by the SHAMIL Foundation.
These are distinct roles:
Younis Group — research, authorship, intellectual programme
SHAMIL Foundation — standard stewardship, specification, and context

Canonical Specification

The authoritative SHAMIL™ specification is available at:
https://shamil.foundation/specifications/shamil/v1-0
The canonical JSON-LD context is available at:
https://shamil.foundation/context/v1-0/shamil.jsonld

Licensing

SHAMIL™ is released under:
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Use is permitted for any purpose, including commercial use, provided attribution is given.
SHAMIL™ is a trademark of Younis Group Ltd and is licensed to the SHAMIL Foundation for stewardship of the standard.

Principle

SHAMIL™ follows a simple rule:
Pages describe entities.
Entity files define entities.
Indexes list entities.
Discovery files expose entities.
This ensures that entity representation is deterministic, not inferred.

Status

Version 1.0 is the initial release of the SHAMIL™ core standard.
It defines the base notation and operates independently of external vocabularies.
Future development will extend the standard through additional context layers and domain-specific extensions.