rrxiv

An open protocol for research preprints in the era of human-agent coproduction.

Status: v0.1 — canonical instance is live at rrxiv.com.

Surface	URL	Owner
Web UI	rrxiv.com	rrxiv-web-official (private)
API	api.rrxiv.com/api/v0	rrxiv-python library + rrxiv-instance deployment overlay
Spec + RRPs	this repo (schema/, proposals/, spec/)	community

What is rrxiv?

rrxiv is a research preprint protocol where:

• Papers are immutable atoms (citation works; versions chain via previous_version).
• Each paper decomposes into structured claims with explicit depends_on / supports / contradicts / extends edges — the claim graph.
• Annotations form a Wikipedia-style discourse layer: replications, errata, summaries, code links.
• Source-of-truth is plain TeX/Typst, not PDF (diff-friendly, agent-readable). Every paper ships both a .cir.json (Canonical Intermediate Representation) and the original tarball.
• The corpus is CC-BY licensed and snapshot-exported, so it cannot be captured by any single host.
• AI agents are first-class participants: read access is free, and write access (submissions, annotations) is symmetric with human contributors via the same auth + signature path.

The genesis paper — rrxiv: An Open Protocol for Research Preprints… — is itself a valid rrxiv submission and lives at rrxiv.com/papers/rrxiv:2605.00001. The first reproducibility demonstration is Euclid's Elements encoded with the full proof DAG; live at rrxiv.com/papers/rrxiv:2605.00009.

Repo contents

• schema/ — JSON Schemas for the Canonical Intermediate Representation (CIR), claims, annotations, etc. Source of truth.
• proposals/ — rrxiv Improvement Proposals (RRPs); RRP-0001 through RRP-0022 currently accepted.
• spec/ — protocol specification documents.
• template/ — rrxiv.cls LaTeX class with semantic environments (\begin{claim}, \begin{evidence}, \dependson{...} etc.). Vendored into each paper repo; bump as the class evolves.
• tests/conformance/ — conformance test suite for any rrxiv implementation. rrxiv-python's reference server is the executable witness.
• CONVENTIONS.md — workflow conventions: one paper = one repo, PDF + tarball pattern, dependency edge format.
• whitepaper/ — symlink-style pointer to rrxiv-whitepaper; kept here for backward-compat with early forks.

Companion repos

• rrxiv-python — reference Python implementation (parser, client SDK, FastAPI server, CLI). Powers api.rrxiv.com.
• rrxiv-paper-template (private template) — GitHub template for spinning up a new rrxiv paper repo with the right scripts + CI.
• rrxiv-whitepaper — the genesis paper, published as its own paper repo.
• rrxiv-paper-euclid-elements — Euclid's Elements encoded with full proof DAG.

Try the live instance

# Browse the corpus + render the home page
open https://rrxiv.com

# Hit the API directly
curl https://api.rrxiv.com/api/v0/papers | jq '.items[] | {id_slug, title}'

# Inspect a specific paper's claim graph
curl https://api.rrxiv.com/api/v0/papers/rrxiv:2605.00009/cir | jq '.claims | length'

The OpenAPI schema is browsable at https://api.rrxiv.com/api/v0/docs (Swagger) and https://api.rrxiv.com/api/v0/redoc (ReDoc).

Publishing your own rrxiv paper

Use the rrxiv-paper-template GitHub template — one repo per paper. The template ships:

• paper/main.tex + rrxiv.cls (LaTeX class with \begin{claim} / \dependson{X.Y}{Z.W} environments)
• scripts/build.sh (tectonic → build/main.pdf)
• scripts/extract-cir.sh (rrxiv parse → build/main.cir.json)
• .github/workflows/build.yml (CI: build + extract + validate on every push)
• rrxiv-meta.json (slug, license, topics — standalone metadata)
• CITATION.cff for GitHub-native citation

Once your paper builds locally, push to GitHub and follow the conventions doc to either run your own instance or open a PR to add the paper to the canonical rrxiv-instance manifest.

For copy-paste recipes covering the rest of the protocol — retracting a claim, replicating a result, encoding a public-domain classic, taking a snapshot, reading the corpus via the CLI — see COOKBOOK.md.

Running the docs site locally

uv tool run --with mkdocs-material --with mkdocs-include-markdown-plugin --with mkdocs-awesome-pages-plugin mkdocs serve
# then open http://127.0.0.1:8000

License

• Code: MIT (see LICENSE).
• Spec docs and whitepaper: CC-BY 4.0 (see LICENSE-CONTENT).

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the RRP process in proposals/README.md. For the conventions every paper repo follows — the three required build artifacts, dependency-edge format, CI release pattern, versioning — see PUBLISHING.md.