PIF
The Preflight Interchange Format. An open specification for the assessment made before an AI workflow enters a regulated process, turned into a portable, validatable, machine-readable artifact.
PIF is an open JSON specification for the inputs and outputs of an AI workflow preflight: the assessment, made before a workflow enters a regulated process, of whether it is appropriate, what controls are missing, and what a human reviewer can sign. It turns that assessment into an artifact that can travel between tools, audit systems, and reviewers. SBOM did this for software supply chains and OpenAPI did it for APIs. PIF does it for AI preflight.
Why a standard and not just a product
I am building a product on top of this, Preclari. But a preflight that only one vendor can read is a preflight you have to trust. An open format lets anyone who distrusts the vendor do more than read it. They can take the format and require different things. The choice of what to check stops being only mine. That is the whole point of writing the spec first.
What PIF defines
Three artifact types. A WorkflowDescription: what an AI workflow is intended to do, its intent, the AI's role, data classes, jurisdictions, the human gate, the lifecycle stage. A PreflightAssertion: the assessment of that workflow against applicable requirements, with the basis and source for each, the missing controls, the assumptions made, the verification steps, and a risk classification. And a PreflightSession: the durable record that wraps the description, the assertion, the tool invocations, and the reviewer's actions.
What PIF deliberately does not do
PIF does not define what makes a preflight "good", which regulations apply to which workflows, or any confidence-calibration method. It describes the shape of preflight artifacts so they can flow between systems, not the substance of regulatory interpretation. The vocabulary has a pharma and GxP heritage, but its namespace already spans medtech, diagnostics, banking, ESG, cyber, and the EU regimes, with an open token pattern so new frameworks are added without breaking changes.
Open in the open
The specification and its JSON Schemas are published under Apache 2.0: PIF v0.1 is the current version, and v0.2 is a draft. Implementations live separately from the spec. Uncertainty is a required field, not optional prose, so a document that hides its limits fails validation rather than passing quietly.
The standard sits underneath Preclari, and I have written about why the move from authority to a checkable artifact matters in The Backdoor You Keep for Yourself.