🧾TOON
🎒 Token-Oriented Object Notation (TOON), compact, human-readable serialization of JSON data for LLM prompts. TypeScript SDK, CLI, benchmarks.
⭐ Very popular: 25k stars, gaining about 54 a week
View on GitHub ↗repo profile
momentum
durability
bus factor = how many people it takes to cover more than half the commits (6 months). 1 is a solo project; higher means the work is spread across a team. top-author share is the single busiest author's slice of those commits.
since we covered it
why it's a big deal
- Reduces token cost for structured data, improving efficiency in LLM heavy apps.
- Keeps schemas explicit through length markers and field headers for more reliable parsing.
- Fits naturally into prompt construction and data retrieval scenarios.
under the hood
- MIT licensed format with TypeScript reference implementation.
- Lossless round trip encoding to and from JSON.
- Supports tabular and nested structures with minimal syntax.
our take from PR#22, 2025-11-26
star history
- PR#22 18k 2025-11-26
- now 25k + 7k since first covered
curve is sampled from GitHub's star history, plus our own daily readings since we covered it; the dashed stretch is before we first covered it, the solid line since. figures at coverage are the numbers we printed then (approx.), current count is live.
understory
Output and attention are roughly in balance.
- output, commits & releases
- clout, star velocity
output = commits & releases; clout = star velocity, both 0 to 100 monthly indices; the gap where output runs above clout is the understory. The understory →
covered in
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Token efficient JSON alternative for LLM inputs
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