Archive Root, life.json, and README.md

Every life archive begins with a root directory. The root holds the manifest, the archive introduction, and the standard content folders.

life.json

life.json is the archive manifest and the only required top-level file. It identifies the format version and gives the archive a title.

{
  "format": "life/0.1",
  "title": "The Bennett Family Archive",
  "owner": "Emily Bennett",
  "language": "en-US",
  "theme": "dusk",
  "website": "https://archive.example.com",
  "email": "archive@example.com"
}

Required fields

• format is the format identifier and version. For this specification it is life/0.1.
• title is the human-readable archive title used in page titles, navigation, and metadata.

Common optional fields

• owner identifies the person, family, or organization responsible for the archive.
• language is a language or locale code such as en, en-US, or ta-IN.
• theme selects the archive's initial visual theme. The reference app accepts light, dusk, gallery, or dark.
• website gives the archive's public website and acts as the reference app's fallback origin for canonical links, social-preview images, sitemap entries, and robots metadata.
• email supplies a public contact address when the archive owner wants one shown.
• Social fields such as github, instagram, linkedin, and youtube may be used by renderers to create footer links.

The manifest accepts additional JSON fields. This lets specialized tools preserve information such as license, creation date, source system, or custom publishing settings. Field names should be descriptive, and tools should preserve unknown fields when rewriting the manifest.

theme is an archive default rather than a locked appearance. A renderer may allow visitors to choose another theme and remember that preference. When theme is omitted, the renderer chooses its configured fallback.

The archive website value travels with the archive, while deployment configuration belongs to the renderer. In a single-site Life Archive App deployment, LAF_SITE_URL can explicitly set the canonical public origin and takes precedence over website. In multi-host mode, the request's X-Forwarded-Host or Host determines the origin for each archive, and website remains a fallback if no usable host is available.

life.json must contain valid JSON: property names and string values use double quotes, trailing commas are not allowed, and comments are not supported.

README.md

README.md is the optional human-readable introduction to the archive. It is ordinary Markdown and is a good place to explain the archive's purpose, scope, owner, editorial policy, or history.

# The Bennett Family Archive

This archive preserves family stories, photographs, recipes, and letters.

## About this archive

The material was collected by three generations of the Bennett family.

The reference app uses README.md on the home and About surfaces. Relative links and images follow the same archive-aware rules as entry bodies.

Standard root folders

entries/      Markdown stories, notes, articles, and records
collections/  Curated groups of related archive entities
people/       Markdown records describing people
places/       Markdown records describing places
albums/       Folder-based photo albums
files/        General media, documents, and presentation assets

Folder names are lowercase and plural by convention. Tools should not place generated caches inside these folders. The reference app writes generated album thumbnails to its own system cache outside the .life archive so the archive remains clean and portable.

Portability recommendations

• Use UTF-8 for JSON and Markdown files.
• Prefer forward slashes in stored relative paths, even when editing on Windows.
• Use relative archive links instead of machine-specific absolute paths.
• Avoid names that differ only by letter case; not every filesystem is case-sensitive.
• Back up the entire .life directory so metadata and media remain together.