Research
Research: what documents could become.
IDOP LABS studies the questions behind the format — how to run untrusted documents safely, how to keep data portable, and how documents can carry their own computation. We publish design notes, technical reports and the results of experiments.
§ 01Areas
What we study.
Secure execution of documents
How to run code from an untrusted file with predictable, verifiable limits — validation, isolation, brokered capabilities.
Data portability
Keeping data with the document, exporting parts of it, and moving it between applications without losing meaning.
Durable digital formats
Specifications, versioning and conformance that let a document outlive the software that made it.
Computational documents
Papers, reports and lessons that contain the models they describe, and let readers operate them.
Consent and capabilities
Permission prompts people can understand, and grants that stay narrow, specific and revocable.
Human–computer interaction
How people recognise, trust and work with documents that behave like applications.
AI as an author
Interactive documents written by language models, and validators that keep the results safe to open.
Browser-based computing
What the web platform’s sandboxing can and cannot guarantee for document readers.
§ 02Latest
Notes and experiments.
Design notePreviewThumbnails without trust — designing IDOP 1.1Why the IDOP 1.1 thumbnail is PNG only, one size, passive, never a reason to refuse a package, and never drawn where it could pass for the reader's interface.Design noteSecrets that never enter the fileHow IDOP lets a document call an API with the user's key without ever seeing the key — credential bindings, origin pinning and the reader as broker.Design noteValidation before execution — why IDOP has no best-effort modeAn IDOP reader checks every byte of a package before any of it runs, and refuses the whole file on the first failure. This note explains the reasoning, and what it costs.ExperimentExperimentalExperiment: Portable ItemsLetting one document export a single item — a card, a lesson, a record — as a standalone document, without understanding its application.ExperimentPreviewExperiment: documents written by AIWhat happens when language models write interactive documents — and why a strict, validated format is a good target for them.ExperimentExperimentalExperiment: IDOP documents as viewersOpening a .docx or an HTML file with an IDOP document as its viewer — which receives exactly that file and nothing else.
§ 03Collaboration
Working with us.
We are interested in hearing from researchers working on document formats, sandboxing, data portability, computational publishing and usable security — whether to discuss the specification, test it, or study it.
We have no formal research partnerships at present. Write to hello@idoplabs.com.
Read the specification we are testing.
IDOP Cloud runs in the browser. Start from a template, open a file you were sent, or keep your own — no installation, and no account needed just to open a document.