DEV Community: Internet Object

The Data Format I Accidentally Built for the AI Era

Internet Object — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 18:43:05 +0000

The Story - How the Internet Object went from a frustration to a format

Most data formats are born in a committee. This one was born from a bandwidth bill.

The 2KB that became 8KB

In 2017 I shipped a "simple" REST API — an employee list. Within weeks, a 2KB response had ballooned to 8KB, for one dumb reason: JSON repeats every key in every record. A thousand employees meant a thousand copies of name, age, address. I was paying for the same words over and over, on every request.

And the validation for those records was written six times over — server, web client, mobile in, mobile out — each team slightly differently. The contract lived in everyone's head and nowhere on the wire. One question stuck:

What if we sent only the values and let a shared schema carry the meaning, validation, and types?

Reading everything that came before

Spotting the problem was easy; not trading one compromise for another was hard. So I read everything — JSON, XML, YAML, CSV, GraphQL, even MIME and SOAP. Each got something right and missed the rest. JSON proved data must be readable, then stayed schemaless and wasteful. Binary formats proved the wire should be small, then made data unreadable. Both half-right.

I wanted both halves: readable and compact, expressive and exact, human and machine. That meant schema-first with validation built in, a clean split between metadata and data, streaming as a first-class idea, and honest types — real decimals, big integers, dates — with no silent coercion. No existing format checked every box, so I built one. The name kept surfacing on its own: Internet Object.

The quiet years

The tidy version leaves this out. It became nights and weekends — prototypes, feedback, rewrites. Then from 2020 into 2021 it went quiet. No commits, just an idea I couldn't abandon. I picked it back up in late 2022, and this time it held. Seven years from that 2017 API to something actually ready. Ideas whose time has come rarely arrive on schedule.

The accident that aged well

I built Internet Object to fix a web data problem — repeated keys, missing schemas, tangled metadata. Not for the AI era; in 2017 there wasn't one. But in GenAI workflows, token count is the main cost driver, and a payload ~50% smaller can roughly halve inference bills. Give a model a schema contract instead of ad-hoc JSON and its output gets more predictable too. Lower cost, higher reliability — free by-products of solving the original problem.

Where it stands

Internet Object is live. Parsers are shipping, the playground is running, teams are testing it in production. It's not a better library in one language — it's an openly specified contract on the wire, one anyone can implement, and no one can lock you into.

Not a better library. A better default.

Next up, we get concrete: how IO's type system actually works — the piece that turns schema-first from a slogan into something the format enforces for you.

Internet Object didn’t start as a JSON replacement.

Internet Object — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 05:56:55 +0000

Internet Object didn’t start as a JSON replacement.
It started with a question:

What if we stopped repeating structure and focused on data?

That idea became schema-first, compact, and GenAI-ready.

👉The Story of Internet Object

What if your API sent values… not repeated keys?

Internet Object — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:34:01 +0000

👉 Try the JSON → IO Playground

Every extra byte becomes an extra token in AI workflows. Same data. Half the size. Internet Object.

Internet Object — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:30:44 +0000

Every extra byte becomes an extra token in AI workflows. This is why Internet Object matters in the GenAI era. Same data. Half the size. 👉 https://internetobject.org #InternetObject #AI #JSON #DataEfficiency

Internet Object — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 16:24:02 +0000

Internet Object - Schema-First Data Serialization Format

Internet Object: 40-50% smaller than JSON with schema-first, type-safe data serialization. Reduce bandwidth costs and improve API performance today.

internetobject.org

JSON has no comments. IO does—because humans read APIs too

Internet Object — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 14:17:23 +0000

JSONvsIO

The Web Didn’t Need Another Syntax — It Needed a Better Contract(Beyond JSON)

Internet Object — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:34:59 +0000

https://dev.to/internetobject/json-is-wasting-your-bandwidth-meet-internet-object-part-1-5hbf

JSON Is Wasting Your Bandwidth: Meet Internet Object (Part 1)

Internet Object — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 07:41:54 +0000

Internet Object

JSON Is Wasting Your Bandwidth: Meet Internet Object (Part 1) https://dev.to/internetobject/from-json-to-internet-object-a-lean-schema-first-data-format-part-1-19e5 #api #backend #webdev #programming

Internet Object — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 07:33:53 +0000

JSON Was Slowing Me Down — So I Created Something Better

Internet Object ・ Nov 27

#python #javascript #api #datascience

Internet Object vs JSON. Same data. Half the bytes. Double the clarity. Developers deserve better tools. #API #developer #JSON

Internet Object — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:39:24 +0000

👉 https://internetobject.org

https://dev.to/internetobject/from-json-to-internet-object-a-lean-schema-first-data-format-part-1-19e5

Internet Object — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:36:15 +0000

JSON Was Slowing Me Down — So I Created Something Better

Internet Object ・ Nov 27

#python #javascript #api #datascience

"JSON wasn’t built for the modern web. Internet Object is a compact, schema-first, human-readable format that fixes structural flaws. 👉 https://internetobject.org 👉 https://play.internetobject.org/simple-collection #JSON #WebDev #API #python

Internet Object — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 16:15:57 +0000

Internet Object - Schema-First Data Serialization Format

Internet Object: 40-50% smaller than JSON with schema-first, type-safe data serialization. Reduce bandwidth costs and improve API performance today.

internetobject.org

Internet Object Playground: Experience the New Data Format

Convert, compare, and visualize data instantly with Internet Object Playground. Experience faster, lighter, schema-first data exchange. Try it now and see the difference!

play.internetobject.org