The interoperability standard for child online safety, made of nine layers.
One Charter and eight runtime capabilities. Each layer is a named contract that platforms, parental controls, and regulators can implement against — so the same parental policy works everywhere a child goes online.
One Charter, eight runtime capabilities.
Every rule in the OCSS registry is implemented by exactly one named capability. Read the spec for any layer below.
Charter
The open child-safety specification (OCSS v1.0).
Read the spec
Age
Reads age signals across OS, app, and household.
Read the spec
Tier
Tier gating across content, AI, and privacy.
Read the spec
Consent
Verifiable parental consent and access boundaries.
Read the spec
Block
Hard blocks for prohibited content and apps.
Read the spec
Alert
Parent-facing notifications, reports, and alerts.
Read the spec
Privacy
Data minimization, retention, and deletion rights.
Read the spec
Audit
Algorithmic transparency, audit, and dark-pattern interventions.
Read the spec
Receipt
Cryptographically signed events and regulatory reporting.
Read the spec
Read, govern, track, verify.
The OCSS surface is more than the runtime layers — here's the governance, history, and conformance work around the spec.
Read the Charter
The contract that anchors all nine layers.
Open
Governance & Adopter Council
Working groups, RFC process, council seats.
Open
Changelog
Every version, every change, every date.
Open
Conformance
How implementations earn OCSS conformance.
Open
Download OCSS (Draft 4 · pre-release)
Machine-readable artifacts and a print-ready PDF land alongside the individual IETF Internet-Draft (draft-phosra-ocstf-00).
Build to the spec, not to the statute.
The Charter defines the contract. The eight runtime capabilities make it real. Adopt the spec once, stay compliant as the laws evolve.