July 4, 2026 · Release candidate

PageDigest v1 is ready for adopter feedback.

PageDigest is a one-file change-detection protocol for public websites. A publisher serves a manifest at /.well-known/pagedigest.json; stateful consumers fetch that manifest, compare it with their cache, and skip page fetches for URLs that provably have not changed.

For a 10,000-page site that changes 20 pages in a week, a consumer can make one manifest request plus 20 page fetches instead of 10,000 per-URL checks.

What is in the v1 RC

A stable wire format with site_rev, per-URL rev, optional digest, and optional modified fields.
Digest audit guidance for consumers that want to verify publisher claims.
Optional PageDigest-State request headers so cooperative consumers can make manifest observations visible in ordinary publisher logs.
Reference publisher and consumer implementations.
Distribution through GitHub Releases, Cargo, npx, PyPI, and an Astro integration.
Production dogfood on pagedigest.org and a measured producer case study for dotrepo.org.

Install paths

npx pagedigest ./site-dist
cargo install pagedigest
python -m pip install pagedigest
npm install @pagedigest/astro

Useful links

Project Spec Contract Roadmap Live dogfood manifest RC feedback

What feedback would help

Publisher integration reports from static-site generators, custom build systems, CMS exports, and CDN/edge deployments.
Consumer integration reports from crawlers, caches, monitors, archive systems, agents, and search/indexing pipelines.
Any cases where URL keys, redirects, digest audits, deployment races, or partial coverage semantics are surprising in practice.

The main remaining v1.0 dependency outside the repo is registry review for the well-known URI and link relation requests. The v1 field semantics are expected to remain stable through final v1.0.