schematuk

Schematuk is a compact schema specification language designed to describe data structures, validation rules, and serialization contracts. It emphasizes readable syntax and predictable parsing, enabling schemas to be shared across services and programming languages. Schematuk schemas can be compiled into JSON Schema, API contracts, or language-specific types to facilitate validation and code generation.

Its design centers on clarity and composability. Schematuk provides primitives for defining named types, required and optional fields, default values, and constraints such as range limits, regular expressions, and enumerations. Schemas can reference other schemas to promote reuse, and composition constructs allow building complex types from simpler ones without duplicating definitions. The language favors concise syntax and minimizes ambiguity to support automated tooling.

An illustrative example (in Schematuk syntax) might define a Person with a name as a string, an age as an integer with a minimum of zero, and an email as an optional string matching a simple pattern. A separate Address schema could be defined and then referenced within Person. Such schemas can be validated at input time and transformed into different targets for APIs or storage.

Tooling and interoperability: Schematuk is accompanied by parsers and generators for several languages, a command-line interface, and libraries that emit JSON Schema, TypeScript types, or OpenAPI-like contracts. Many projects use Schematuk to maintain consistent data models across microservices and data pipelines.

History and status: Schematuk originated in online developer discussions as a lightweight alternative to larger schema ecosystems. It has no single official standard, and implementations vary by project. It is most commonly found in open-source tooling and in educational contexts to illustrate schema design concepts.

See also:

- JSON Schema

- OpenAPI

- TypeScript type definitions

- Data modeling languages