Show HN: Declare AI – open standard for AI content disclosure

[BetterToBest]

I'm not a developer — I'm the person who came up with this idea and built an interactive prototype with Claude's help. I'm posting here because this is exactly the kind of project that needs real engineers to take it somewhere.

The idea: a declare-ai.json file that any creator, platform, or AI tool can publish alongside content — declaring what percentage was written, coded, illustrated, or researched by AI versus humans, which tools were used, and who the human contributors are. A lightweight embeddable widget displays it as a collapsible pie chart. A browser extension auto-detects it on any page. A community forum handles disputes.

Think Creative Commons, but for AI provenance. Or a nutrition label, but for intelligence.

The demo is a full interactive developer briefing — architecture diagram, JSON schema, forum mockup with a real dispute thread example, tech stack recommendation, and phased roadmap. The widget on the page declares itself.

I've gifted it as MIT. I'm looking for developers who want to own this with me.

GitHub: https://github.com/Declare-AI/declare-ai Live demo: https://declare-ai.github.io/declare-ai/declare-ai-devteam.h...

Genuinely open to all feedback — including "this already exists and here's why it won't work."

[BetterToBest]

I'm not a developer — I came up with this idea and built an interactive prototype with Claude's help. Posting here because this needs real engineers to take it somewhere.

The idea: a declare-ai.json file any creator or platform can publish alongside content — declaring what percentage was written, coded, illustrated, or researched by AI vs humans, which tools were used, and who the human contributors are. An embeddable widget displays it as a collapsible pie chart. A browser extension auto-detects it on any page. A community forum handles disputes.

Think Creative Commons, but for AI provenance.

The demo is a full interactive developer briefing — architecture, JSON schema, forum mockup with a dispute thread example, tech stack, and phased roadmap. The widget on the page declares itself.

MIT licensed. Looking for developers who want to own this with me.

Genuinely open to all feedback — including "this already exists and here's why it won't work."

[joaquin_arias]

Interesting concept. The biggest challenge I see isn’t the JSON schema or the widget, those are straightforward — but incentive alignment.

Why would creators or platforms voluntarily disclose AI usage if it could reduce perceived authenticity or trust?

For Creative Commons, the incentive was legal clarity and distribution benefits. For something like this to become a real standard, there probably needs to be either:

- Regulatory pressure

- Platform-level enforcement

- Search ranking or discoverability benefits

Otherwise, it risks becoming an “honesty-only” protocol that mainly compliant actors adopt, while bad actors ignore it.

Have you thought about what mechanism could drive adoption beyond goodwill?

[BetterToBest]

Voluntary declarations are already standard in many cases such as education and research, this makes it easy to display, especially for those who want to see what tools were used for say, a video production.

Then the next phase is a debunking score, where call outs cast doubt on deep fakes framed as real.

The widget can display much more info than the v.1 demo.