Today we published the Open Child Safety Specification (OCSS) · Draft 4 · pre-release as a public repository at github.com/phosra-spec/pcss, licensed CC BY 4.0. It is an individual IETF Internet-Draft, not a ratified standard. The first cohort of Charter Adopters will help close that gap by Q3 2026.
What’s in Draft 4
The canonical spec covers thirteen sections — Charter, Age (age signal), Tier (tier evaluation), Consent (parental consent), Block (hard blocks), Alert (notifications), Privacy (data minimization), Audit (algorithmic audit), Receipt (signed receipts), plus conformance and a versioned changelog. The wire format is published as JSON Schema 2020-12; the runtime API surface as OpenAPI 3.1.
Receipts use an EIP-712-style canonicalization and ed25519 signatures. The point is that any regulator, civil-society auditor, or downstream parent-control app can re-execute an audit against the same Tier and either get an identical answer or produce evidence of divergence. Conformance is not a slide; it is a verifiable runtime state.
Why “pre-release,” not “ratified”
Phosra Inc. is currently the sole steward of the spec. That is the honest framing of a pre-release draft from a Delaware C-corp that also operates a commercial implementer of the same spec. The pre-release period is when we recruit Charter Adopters (cohort closes Q3 2026), seat an Adopter Council with at least one civil-society and one academic seat, and move stewardship toward an independent body — a foundation transition targeted for late 2026.
Until then, we want maximum public scrutiny. Anyone can file an RFC. Sponsorship by a Tier-2+ adopter is required to advance a proposal to final-call, but civil-society contributors are exempt from that sponsorship rule because their voice should not depend on commercial backing.
What changes today on phosra.com
Every place the website previously claimed the spec was ratified now reads “OCSS · Draft 4 · pre-release.” Spec links that used to gate behind a Charter cohort signup now point at the real public repository. The conformance, contributor, and capability docs live in version control where anyone can read them, propose changes, or fork them.
What comes next
Three things in the next 90 days. (1) Ship the conformance test runner, so any implementer can self-attest at Tier-0. (2) Open Adopter Council seats and publish the first set of working-group chairs. (3) Land at least one external implementation against the public spec — not Phosra’s own — so the spec proves out as a multi-vendor wire format and not a single-vendor product.
If you build parental controls, run a platform that hosts minors, or set policy at a civil-society or regulatory body, the repo is open. Applications for the Charter Adopter cohort run through Q3 2026.
About Phosra
Phosra is an open child safety spec and API. Kids use 229+ apps and platforms — each with different, fragmented parental controls. Phosra defines a universal spec so platforms can offer interoperable controls and parents can set rules once. We track 91 child safety laws across 25+ jurisdictions. Learn more at phosra.com.
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