DRAFT Linked Web Storage Working Group Charter

The mission of the Linked Web Storage Working Group is to enable the development of web applications where data storage, entity authentication, access control, and application provider are all loosely coupled, as opposed to the web of today where these are typically all tightly coupled and changing one requires changing all, sometimes at the price of all past data. This will be achieved by identifying a set of relevant use-cases, and standardizing a protocol between applications, on the one hand, and identity and storage servers, on the other hand.

Join the Linked Web Storage Working Group.

This proposed charter is available on GitHub. Feel free to raise issues.

Charter Status	See the group status page and detailed change history.
Start date	[dd monthname yyyy] (date of the "Call for Participation", when the charter is approved)
End date	[dd monthname yyyy] (Start date + 2 years)
Chairs	Aaron Coburn (Inrupt Inc.) Eric Prud'hommeaux (W3C Invited Experts) Laurens Debackere (Digitaal Vlaanderen)
Team Contacts	Pierre-Antoine Champin (0.1 FTE)
Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: topic-specific calls may be held or something else Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, usually no more than 3 per year. See also this group calendar

Motivation and Background

It is common for web service providers to require users to surrender control over their own data, and store them in a way that is often restricted to certain systems, or can only be accessed by the applications that created them.

A number of initiatives — such as IndieWeb, Unhosted, and Solid — have emerged to propose alternative models for web applications. They are largely based on existing open web standards, which they extend to give priority to individual and group autonomy.

The W3C Solid Community Group has been incubating specifications since 2018 towards that end, i.e., "to describe the interoperability between different classes of products by using web communication protocols, global identifiers, authentication and authorization mechanisms, data formats and shapes, notifications, and query interfaces." It has regularly sought cross-fertilization with the aforementioned communities, among others (e.g., the Credentials Community Group (CCG), the Federated Identity Community Group, the Social Web Incubator Community Group, and the Web Platform Incubator Community Group (WICG)).

The broader Solid community has developed a suite of implementations, tools, and libraries for developers, as well as applications for users. Also see an explainer for more detailed description of the Solid approach.

Scope

The scope of the Working Group is to define a web protocol that applications can use to authenticate users and store their data with user-chosen identity and storage servers. Applications that use this protocol can more easily allow their users to exert and maintain authority over their data, identity, and privacy. This protocol will ensure interoperability between compliant user applications, and compliant storage and identity servers, thus giving users the freedom to select the applications and services that suit their needs.

Based on the user stories identified by the Solid project, potentially extended by Working Group participants, the Working Group will:

Define a core web protocol specification for the secure and efficient operation of compliant servers and the behavior of compliant applications interacting with those servers.
Recommend a set of practices needed for data security for Linked Web Storage storage, and for both server and client software, including use of appropriate authentication, authorization, access management life-cycle, verification, identity, and other standards, integrating existing outside efforts.

Out of Scope

The following features are out of scope, and will not be addressed by this Working group.

Definition of a unique and exclusive solution for Personal Data Stores
Definition of new identity mechanisms
Definition of new data formats

Deliverables

Updated document status is available on the group publication status page.

Draft state indicates the state of the deliverable at the time of the charter approval. Choose one: Expected completion indicates when the deliverable is projected to become a Recommendation, or otherwise reach a stable state The Working Group intends to publish the latest state of their work as Candidate Recommendation (with Snapshots) and does not intend to advance their documents to Recommendation.

Normative Specifications

The Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:

LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: OpenID Connect

This document defines an OpenID Connect-based authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling LWS applications to integrate with OpenID providers.

Draft state: Working Draft

Expected completion: [Q1–4 YYYY]

Latest publication: 2026-06-09

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/WD-lws10-authn-openid-20260423/
Exclusion period began on 2026-04-23 and will end on 2026-09-20.

Exclusion Draft Charter: Produced under Working Group Charter: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/linked-web-storage-wg-charter.html

LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: SAML 2.0

This document defines a SAML-based authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling LWS applications to integrate with SAML 2.0 identity providers.

Draft state: Working Draft

Expected completion: [Q1–4 YYYY]

Latest publication: 2026-06-09

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/WD-lws10-authn-saml-20260423/
Exclusion period began on 2026-04-23 and will end on 2026-09-20.

Exclusion Draft Charter: Produced under Working Group Charter: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/linked-web-storage-wg-charter.html

LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: Self-signed Identity using Controlled Identifiers

This document defines an authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling clients that are able to sign their own identity tokens to integrate with LWS.

Draft state: Working Draft

Expected completion: [Q1–4 YYYY]

Latest publication: 2026-06-09

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/WD-lws10-authn-ssi-cid-20260423/
Exclusion period began on 2026-04-23 and will end on 2026-09-20.

Exclusion Draft Charter: Produced under Working Group Charter: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/linked-web-storage-wg-charter.html

LWS 1.0 Authentication Suite: Self-signed Identity using did:key

This document defines an authentication suite for the Linked Web Storage (LWS) protocol, enabling clients that are able to sign their own identity tokens to integrate with LWS.

Draft state: Working Draft

Expected completion: [Q1–4 YYYY]

Latest publication: 2026-06-09

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/WD-lws10-authn-ssi-did-key-20260423/
Exclusion period began on 2026-04-23 and will end on 2026-09-20.

Exclusion Draft Charter: Produced under Working Group Charter: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/linked-web-storage-wg-charter.html

Linked Web Storage Protocol 1.0

The Linked Web Storage Protocol specification aims to provide applications with secure and permissioned access to externally stored data in an interoperable way.

Draft state: Working Draft

Expected completion: [Q1–4 YYYY]

Latest publication: 2026-07-28

Exclusion Draft: https://www.w3.org/TR/2026/WD-lws10-core-20260331/
Exclusion period began on 2026-03-31 and will end on 2026-08-28.

Exclusion Draft Charter: Produced under Working Group Charter: https://www.w3.org/2024/09/linked-web-storage-wg-charter.html

Tentative Deliverables

Depending on the incubation progress, interest from multiple implementers, and the consensus of the Group participants, the Working Group may adopt the following documents as Rec-track specifications:

Web [spec name]

This specification defines [concrete description].

Draft state: Proposal in [other name] Community Group

Other Deliverables

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

Use case and requirement documents;
Test suite and implementation report for the specification;
Primer or Best Practice documents to support web developers when designing applications.

Timeline

Put here a timeline view of all deliverables.

Month YYYY: First teleconference
Month YYYY: First face-to-face meeting
Month YYYY: Requirements and Use Cases for FooML
Month YYYY: FPWD for FooML
Month YYYY: Requirements and Use Cases for BarML
Month YYYY: FPWD FooML Primer

Success Criteria

Remove this clause if the Group does not intend to move to REC: In order to advance beyond Candidate Recommendation, each normative specification is expected to have at least two independent interoperable implementations of every feature defined in the specification, where interoperability can be verified by passing open test suites. In order to advance beyond Candidate Recommendation, each normative specification must have an open test suite of every feature defined in the specification.

There should be testing plans for each specification, starting from the earliest drafts.

To promote interoperability, all changes made to specifications in Candidate Recommendation or to features that have deployed implementations should have tests. Testing efforts should be conducted via the Web Platform Tests project.

Each specification should contain separate sections detailing all known security and privacy implications for implementers, Web authors, and users.

This group is expected to be guided by the following documents:

Consider adding this clause if the Group does not intend to move to REC: All new features should have expressions of interest from at least two potential implementors before being incorporated in the specification.

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD. The Working Group is encouraged to engage collaboratively with the horizontal review groups throughout development of each specification. The Working Group is advised to seek a review at least 3 months before first entering CR and is encouraged to proactively notify the horizontal review groups when major changes occur in a specification following a review.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

In addition to the above catch-all reference to horizontal review which includes accessibility review, please check with chairs and staff contacts of the Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group to determine if an additional liaison statement with more specific information about concrete review issues is needed in the list below.

W3C Groups

Credentials Community Group: To explore and report on the application of creating, storing, presenting, verifying, and user control of credentials in the context of Linked Web Storage Protocol.
Decentralized Identifier Working Group: To investigate whether existing DID methods should be adopted by the Linked Web Storage Protocol (and related technical reports), and to advance an understanding of whether a specific DID method is needed.
Federated Identity Working Group: To further develop a mutual understanding of how the federated credential management API and Linked Web Storage can align better.
Notation 3 (N3) Community Group: To investigate the possibility of transferring Linked Web Storage Protocol's N3 Patch to the N3 Community Group where its standardization development can continue with broader applicability.
RDF & SPARQL Working Group: To reuse and report on recent extensions to RDF and SPARQL that can be incorporated with upstream specifications like the Linked Web Storage Protocol.
Social Web Incubator Community Group: To continue with the development of a shared understanding between Linked Data(-compatible) specifications and their reuse, e.g., ActivityPub, AS2, LDN.
Solid Community Group: To maintain a separation of goals and transfer of incubated work items.
Unhosted Web Community Group: To explore the overlaps (e.g., CORS, user-centric storage, JSON-LD container descriptions) and differences (e.g., OAuth instead of WAC/ACP) between the Linked Web Storage Protocol draft and their work on remoteStorage.
Verifiable Credentials Working Group: To inquire on the suitability of credential data models and serializations, and their potential integration with the Linked Web Storage Protocol.
WebID Community Group: To provide integration feedback on the use of WebIDs in Linked Web Storage Protocol (and related technical reports) in order to stabilize the fundamental notions and behaviors.
Web Authentication Working Group: To ensure that Web Authentication primitives align with Linked Web Storage principles and aims, as well as investigate areas to bridge with the WebAuthn API to improve user's privacy and consent.
Web of Things Working Group: To investigate the suitability of Linked Web Storage Protocol in the context of IoT platforms and application domains, and ways to improve their integration.

External Organizations

IETF HTTP Working Group: To ensure that the Linked Web Storage Protocol is following best practices, in particular BCP 56: Building Protocols with HTTP.
OpenID Connect Work Group: Coordination on specifications related to OpenID Connect (OIDC).

Participation

To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have 6 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a working day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication. The group also welcomes non-participants to make technical contributions for ongoing work, provided they agree to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

The Chairs should periodically look through the non-W3C-Member contributors to the Working Group or the [name of an associated Community Group, if any] and consider whether each one should be invited to participate as an Invited Expert. If a non-W3C-Member contributor would like to participate in meetings, they are encouraged to apply to be an Invited Expert.

Participants in the group are required (by the W3C Process) to follow the W3C Code of Conduct.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are conducted in public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed in public repositories and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Linked Web Storage Working Group home page.

Most Linked Web Storage Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work pick one, or both, as appropriate: on the public mailing list public-lws-wg@w3.org (archive) or on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-only mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

This group will seek to make decisions through consensus and due process, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.1, Consensus). Typically, an editor or other participant makes an initial proposal, which is then refined in discussion with members of the group and other reviewers, and consensus emerges with little formal voting being required.

However, if a decision is necessary for timely progress and consensus is not achieved after careful consideration of the range of views presented, the Chairs may call for a group vote and record a decision along with any objections.

To afford asynchronous decisions and organizational deliberation, any resolution (including publication decisions) taken in a face-to-face meeting or teleconference will be considered provisional. A call for consensus (CfC) will be issued for all resolutions (for example, via email, GitHub issue or web-based survey), with a response period from five to ten working days, depending on the chair's evaluation of the group consensus on the issue. If no objections are raised by the end of the response period, the resolution will be considered to have consensus as a resolution of the Working Group.

All decisions made by the group should be considered resolved unless and until new information becomes available or unless reopened at the discretion of the Chairs.

This charter is written in accordance with the W3C Process Document (Section 5.2.3, Deciding by Vote) and includes no voting procedures beyond what the Process Document requires.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (Version of 15 May 2025). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Web specifications that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the licensing information.

Licensing

This Working Group will use the W3C Software and Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 3.4 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

Note:Display this table and update it when appropriate. Requirements for charter extension history are documented in the Charter Guidebook (section 4).

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 4.3, Advisory Committee Review of a Charter):

Charter Period	Start Date	End Date	Changes
Initial Charter	2024-09-09	2026-09-08	N/A
Update			Replaced two placeholders (that remained unnoticed until then) with the name of the working group (Pierre-Antoine Champin, 2024-10-23)

Change log

Changes to this document are documented in this section.