NEON (Next Exchange Object Notation)

NEON is a human-readable data format for configs and API payloads.

Status

• Reference implementation: Python 3.9+
• CI tested versions: Python 3.10, 3.11, 3.12, 3.13
• Release policy: first public release after all CI quality gates pass
• Current scope: parser, serializer, CLI, conformance suite

Install (local dev)

python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e "parsers/python[dev]"

Quick Start

from neon import loads, dumps, format_text

doc = '{"host": @env(DB_HOST, "localhost"), "retry": 3}'
value = loads(doc, mode="config")
print(value)
print(dumps(value, mode="pretty"))
print(format_text(doc))

CLI

neon parse config.neon
neon format config.neon
neon validate config.neon
neon compact config.neon

Use stdin by omitting file path:

cat config.neon | neon validate

Repository Layout

• spec/: NEON 1.0 specification and grammar
• conformance/: language-agnostic test corpus and runner
• parsers/python/: reference implementation
• scripts/: CI helper scripts
• docs/: operational and user docs