JDON — JSON-Delimited Object Notation

JDON is a compact, LLM-native data format designed for structured data.
Inspired by JSON, JDON uses columnar arrays and | (pipe) delimiter to reduce token usage while remaining human-readable and machine-parsable.

Key Features

• LLM-friendly — predictable patterns and flattened objects make parsing and generation easy for AI models.
• Token-efficient — columnar arrays and minimal punctuation drastically reduce token count.
• Human-readable — simpler than JSON for large datasets, without deep nesting or unnecessary quotes.
• Columnar arrays — perfect for arrays of objects, reducing repetition.

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JDON vs JSON

Example JSON

{
  "users": [
    { "id": 1, "name": "Alice", "role": "admin" },
    { "id": 2, "name": "Bob", "role": "user" },
    { "id": 3, "name": "Charlie", "role": "user" }
  ],
  "meta": {
    "version": 2,
    "created": "2025-01-15"
  },
  "tags": ["admin", "dev", "ops"]
}

Example JDON

meta:{
  version:2|
  created:2025-01-15
}|
tags:[admin,dev,ops]|
users:[
  id:1,2,3|
  name:Alice,Bob,Charlie|
  role:admin,user,user
]

Without formatting

meta:{version:2|created:2025-01-15}|tags:[admin,dev,ops]|users:[id:1,2,3|name:Alice,Bob,Charlie|role:admin,user,user]

Columnar Arrays

[
  id:emp_001,emp_002,emp_003,emp_004,emp_005|
  name:"Alice Johnson","Bob Smith","Carol White","David Brown","Eve Davis"|
  email:[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected],[email protected]|
  department:Engineering,Marketing,Engineering,Sales,HR|
  salary:95000,72000,103000,68000,81000|
  active:true,true,true,false,true
]