OpenAffiliate 0.1: one file a merchant serves about the commission it pays (#166)

The descriptor at /.well-known/openaffiliate.json (programs with pays,
link, window, attribution, hold_days, payout, approval, self), the four
calls (join with an OpenProfile.md, link with ?oa=code, read the ledger,
get paid to your own address), webhooks, discovery, what a directory
owes a merchant, and what is deliberately absent: no network in the
money, no tracking host, no application form, no exclusivity, no
impression payments. Landing page at /openaffiliate, registered in
DOC_SLUGS, NAV, sitemap and llms.txt. Reference implementation is
crawlproof.com/affiliate.


Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01CDEiDss9RWYibtmxSk5Gr2

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>

apps/logicsrc-web/src/app/llms.txt/route.ts

@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ export function GET(): Response {
 - [OpenDisk](${SITE_URL}/opendisk): One file a machine serves about the disk it will rent: free GiB, price per GiB-month, location, policy, proof cadence and hub standing, discovered at /.well-known/opendisk.json. What a peer-to-peer storage market is made of; reference marketplace d1sks.com.
 - [OpenCoupon](${SITE_URL}/opencoupon): One file a merchant serves about what is on offer right now, at /.well-known/opencoupon.json: every code, sale and shipping threshold with kind, value, scope, dates, status and regions, expired codes kept so directories learn they died. A coupon site reads the merchant instead of a forum thread.
 - [OpenRecipe.md](${SITE_URL}/openrecipe): One Markdown file that is a recipe: summary block (Serves, Prep, Cook, Cuisine, Diet, Author, Source), ingredients and steps as written, notes, nutrition; served next to the page or linked with rel="openrecipe"; schema.org/Recipe JSON-LD is derived from it, never the reverse.
+- [OpenAffiliate](${SITE_URL}/openaffiliate): One file a merchant serves about the commission it pays, at /.well-known/openaffiliate.json: programs with what pays (sale, subscription, signup, lead, install), percent or amount, attribution window, hold days and payout methods; four calls let a person or an agent join with an OpenProfile.md, link with ?oa=code, read its own ledger and get paid to its own address. No network in the money; reference implementation crawlproof.com/affiliate.
 - [AgentSwarm](${SITE_URL}/agent-swarm): Provider-neutral agent orchestration, model routing, and cost controls.
 - [AgentByte](${SITE_URL}/agentbyte): Agent screening sessions, policy events, and APIs.
 - [Credential Sharing](${SITE_URL}/credential-sharing): End-to-end-encrypted team vaults, plus source/target credential diffs, approval, sync, rollback, and audit.

apps/logicsrc-web/src/app/openaffiliate/page.tsx

@@ -0,0 +1,233 @@
+import Link from "next/link";
+import type { ReactNode } from "react";
+import type { Metadata } from "next";
+import { SiteShell } from "@/components/site-shell";
+import { mono, pre, table, td, th } from "../openontology/ui";
+
+export const metadata: Metadata = {
+  title: "OpenAffiliate · LogicSRC",
+  description:
+    "OpenAffiliate is one file a merchant serves about the commission it pays, at /.well-known/openaffiliate.json, and four calls that let a person or an agent earn it: join with a profile, link with one parameter, read your own ledger, get paid to your own address. No network in the money.",
+  alternates: { canonical: "/openaffiliate" }
+};
+
+const DESCRIPTOR = `{
+  "merchant": { "name": "CrawlProof", "web": "https://crawlproof.com", "currency": "USD",
+                "terms": "https://crawlproof.com/affiliate/terms" },
+  "updated": "2026-09-13T06:00:00Z",
+  "programs": [
+    { "id": "partners", "title": "CrawlProof partner program",
+      "join": "https://crawlproof.com/api/affiliate/v1/join",
+      "ledger": "https://crawlproof.com/api/affiliate/v1/ledger",
+      "approval": "open",
+      "pays": [
+        { "event": "sale", "kind": "percent", "value": 30 },
+        { "event": "subscription", "kind": "percent", "value": 30, "months": 12 },
+        { "event": "signup", "kind": "amount", "value": 0.5 }
+      ],
+      "link": { "param": "oa", "deep": true },
+      "window": 30, "attribution": "last", "hold_days": 30,
+      "payout": { "methods": ["usdc/eip155:137"], "min": 10, "schedule": "weekly" },
+      "self": "refused", "status": "active" }
+  ]
+}`;
+
+const JOIN = `POST https://crawlproof.com/api/affiliate/v1/join
+{ "profile": "https://anthony.example/.well-known/openprofile.md" }
+
+201 { "membership": "am_8f3c", "status": "active", "code": "anthony",
+      "link": "https://crawlproof.com/?oa=anthony", "token": "oa_5Kq…",
+      "ledger": "https://crawlproof.com/api/affiliate/v1/ledger" }`;
+
+const EVENTS: Array<[string, string, string]> = [
+  ["sale", "a one-time charge", "percent of amount, or a flat amount"],
+  ["subscription", "each charge of a recurring one", "months caps how many renewals pay; absent is every one"],
+  ["signup", "an account created", "usually a flat amount"],
+  ["lead", "a form submitted", "a flat amount"],
+  ["install", "an app installed", "a flat amount"],
+  ["other", "the merchant's own words", "kept, listed, not filtered on"]
+];
+
+const CALLS: Array<[string, string]> = [
+  ["Join", "POST the program's join URL with an OpenProfile.md URL. Back comes a code, a link, a token and the terms as they stood. open answers active at once; review answers pending."],
+  ["Link", "The merchant's URL with ?oa=code. No redirect host, no shortener, no pixel. deep: true means it works on any page, so you link to the product you recommend."],
+  ["Ledger", "GET the ledger with the token: clicks, every conversion with its status and hold, balances pending, approved and paid, every payout with its tx. A reversal must carry a reason."],
+  ["Payout", "The whole approved balance to your own pay address on the schedule, once it passes min. Nothing netted, because there is no network to pay."]
+];
+
+const NETWORK: Array<[string, string]> = [
+  ["A third of the commission", "Nothing. The merchant pays the affiliate. A directory that charges does so as a stated fee, never as a share of a conversion."],
+  ["Apply, wait weeks", "A profile. approval: open answers at once; review says the merchant looks first, and says so in the file."],
+  ["Terms in a PDF you signed once", "Terms in a file at a fixed URL, fetched any time, kept with the membership as they stood at the join, changed forward only."],
+  ["A reversal with no reason", "A reversal without a reason is not a reversal. The affiliate reports it and a directory says so beside the program."],
+  ["Ten dashboards", "One ledger shape per program, readable by anyone with the token, so one page can show all of them."],
+  ["Sixty days, minus a fee, in their currency", "hold_days, then the schedule, to your own address, in the asset the file names. The tx is in the ledger."]
+];
+
+const ABSENT: Array<[string, string]> = [
+  ["No network", "The merchant serves the terms, records the conversions and sends the money. Nobody sits in the middle of a payment."],
+  ["No tracking host", "A link is the merchant's URL with a parameter. Only a navigation sets attribution; an image, frame, script or prefetch sets nothing."],
+  ["No application form", "An affiliate is a profile. A person or an agent, with an operator who answers for the agent."],
+  ["No exclusivity", "A membership binds nobody to one program, and a program may not require it."],
+  ["No impression payments", "A view is not an event. The events are things a customer did."]
+];
+
+export default function OpenAffiliatePage(): ReactNode {
+  return (
+    <SiteShell active="OpenAffiliate">
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <p className="eyebrow">LogicSRC standards surface</p>
+          <h2>OpenAffiliate</h2>
+          <p>
+            One file a merchant serves about the commission it pays, and four calls that let a
+            person or an agent earn it. No network in the money.
+          </p>
+        </div>
+        <p style={{ color: "#41505d" }}>
+          Affiliate marketing runs through networks, and the networks are the problem. A merchant
+          pays a third of every commission for a pixel and a payout file. An affiliate applies to
+          each program by hand, waits weeks, and ends up with ten dashboards that disagree. Terms
+          live in a PDF signed once. A conversion is reversed with no reason. A payout arrives sixty
+          days later, minus a fee. And none of it is readable by a machine, so an agent that could
+          earn by recommending the right product cannot find out what the commission is. The
+          merchant already knows what it pays and what each sale was worth. OpenAffiliate is that,
+          written down, at <code style={mono}>/.well-known/openaffiliate.json</code>.
+        </p>
+        <p style={{ color: "#5b6b7a" }}>
+          Status: 0.1. The reference implementation is{" "}
+          <a href="https://crawlproof.com/affiliate">crawlproof.com</a>, which runs its own
+          program, joins other merchants&apos; programs from the same dashboard, and pays in USDC on
+          Polygon. The smallest valid file is a merchant with a name and a program with a title
+          and one thing it pays.
+        </p>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>The descriptor</h2>
+          <p>
+            A commission fetched from the merchant&apos;s own origin is the commission the merchant
+            says it pays, today, in words it cannot say it never agreed to.
+          </p>
+        </div>
+        <pre style={pre}>{DESCRIPTOR}</pre>
+        <p style={{ color: "#41505d" }}>
+          <code style={mono}>pays</code> is one entry per event. <code style={mono}>window</code>{" "}
+          is the attribution window in days and <code style={mono}>attribution</code> whether a
+          later click replaces an earlier one. <code style={mono}>hold_days</code> is the refund
+          window a conversion waits out as pending. <code style={mono}>payout.methods</code> are{" "}
+          <code style={mono}>asset/chain</code> pairs or a named rail. <code style={mono}>self</code>{" "}
+          says whether the affiliate&apos;s own purchase pays. Unknown keys are kept.
+        </p>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>Four calls</h2>
+        </div>
+        <table style={table}>
+          <tbody>
+            {CALLS.map(([what, how]) => (
+              <tr key={what}>
+                <td style={td}>
+                  <strong>{what}</strong>
+                </td>
+                <td style={td}>{how}</td>
+              </tr>
+            ))}
+          </tbody>
+        </table>
+        <pre style={pre}>{JOIN}</pre>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>Six events</h2>
+        </div>
+        <table style={table}>
+          <thead>
+            <tr>
+              <th style={th}>event</th>
+              <th style={th}>what happened</th>
+              <th style={th}>how it pays</th>
+            </tr>
+          </thead>
+          <tbody>
+            {EVENTS.map(([event, what, how]) => (
+              <tr key={event}>
+                <td style={td}>
+                  <code style={mono}>{event}</code>
+                </td>
+                <td style={td}>{what}</td>
+                <td style={td}>{how}</td>
+              </tr>
+            ))}
+          </tbody>
+        </table>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>What a network costs, and what replaces it</h2>
+        </div>
+        <table style={table}>
+          <thead>
+            <tr>
+              <th style={th}>on a network</th>
+              <th style={th}>with OpenAffiliate</th>
+            </tr>
+          </thead>
+          <tbody>
+            {NETWORK.map(([before, after]) => (
+              <tr key={before}>
+                <td style={td}>{before}</td>
+                <td style={td}>{after}</td>
+              </tr>
+            ))}
+          </tbody>
+        </table>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>What is deliberately absent</h2>
+        </div>
+        <table style={table}>
+          <tbody>
+            {ABSENT.map(([what, why]) => (
+              <tr key={what}>
+                <td style={td}>
+                  <strong>{what}</strong>
+                </td>
+                <td style={td}>{why}</td>
+              </tr>
+            ))}
+          </tbody>
+        </table>
+      </div>
+
+      <div className="band">
+        <div className="section-head">
+          <h2>Where everything lives</h2>
+        </div>
+        <ul style={{ color: "#41505d", lineHeight: 1.9, paddingLeft: "1.1rem" }}>
+          <li>
+            <Link href="/docs/openaffiliate">Specification</Link>: the descriptor, eleven rules,
+            six events, join, links and attribution, the ledger, webhooks, payouts, discovery,
+            what a directory owes a merchant
+          </li>
+          <li>
+            <a href="https://crawlproof.com/affiliate">crawlproof.com/affiliate</a>: the reference
+            implementation, running its own program and a directory of others
+          </li>
+          <li>
+            <Link href="/openprofile">OpenProfile.md</Link>, the affiliate&apos;s identity and pay
+            address; <Link href="/opencoupon">OpenCoupon</Link>, a merchant&apos;s promotions in
+            the same shape
+          </li>
+        </ul>
+      </div>
+    </SiteShell>
+  );
+}

apps/logicsrc-web/src/app/sitemap.ts

@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ const STATIC_ROUTES: Array<{
   { path: "/opendisk", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.9 },
   { path: "/opencoupon", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.9 },
   { path: "/openrecipe", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.9 },
+  { path: "/openaffiliate", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.9 },
   { path: "/openontology/explore", changeFrequency: "daily", priority: 0.7 },
   { path: "/openspec", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.8 },
   { path: "/agent-swarm", changeFrequency: "weekly", priority: 0.8 },

apps/logicsrc-web/src/components/site-shell.tsx

@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ const NAV: Array<{ href: string; label: string; external?: boolean }> = [
   { href: "/opendisk", label: "OpenDisk" },
   { href: "/opencoupon", label: "OpenCoupon" },
   { href: "/openrecipe", label: "OpenRecipe.md" },
+  { href: "/openaffiliate", label: "OpenAffiliate" },
   { href: "/#cli", label: "CLI" },
   { href: "/docs", label: "Docs" },
   { href: "/blog", label: "Blog" },

apps/logicsrc-web/src/lib/docs.ts

@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ export const DOC_SLUGS = [
   "opendisk",
   "opencoupon",
   "openrecipe",
+  "openaffiliate",
   "openstream",
   "opencpu",
   "openmemory",