Hardware Intelligence Manifest, or HI-M, is an open concept proposal for future-readable hardware.
The idea is simple: hardware should carry a durable, machine-readable and human-readable knowledge package describing its identity, interfaces, protocols, safety limits, quirks, test procedures, version history, and design rationale.
The goal is not to eliminate drivers or replace existing standards. The goal is to reduce hardware knowledge loss by preserving enough operational context for future systems, tools, engineers, and AI agents to recover support when vendor documentation, driver downloads, SDKs, or institutional knowledge disappear.
This project is an open conceptual handoff. I am not presenting myself as a hardware engineer or claiming a completed implementation. I am publishing the idea clearly so engineers and relevant communities can critique, adapt, and develop it further.
Author: Christian Anderson
Version: 0.1
License: CC BY 4.0
Archived release DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20600118
Concept DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20600117
Hardware should not merely identify itself to the present. It should explain itself to the future.
Today, many devices expose enough information for a host system to enumerate them: a vendor ID, product ID, class, bus address, descriptor, configuration table, or firmware revision. That is useful, but it is not the same as preserving operational meaning.
HI-M proposes a durable interpretability layer for hardware: a structured and human-readable package that can describe how a device works, what it can safely do, which constraints matter, which initialization sequences are required, which quirks are known, and how future tools can verify basic behavior.
The shorthand framing is:
A Rosetta Stone for hardware.
Hardware often becomes unusable before it physically fails.
A device may remain functional while the knowledge needed to operate it disappears. Vendor websites shut down. Driver downloads vanish. Old installers stop working. SDKs become incompatible. Operating systems change. Datasheets move or disappear. Forum posts decay. Undocumented quirks are forgotten. Companies abandon products. Users are left with working hardware that can no longer be configured, repaired, tested, or integrated.
This repository calls that problem hardware knowledge loss:
A device suffers hardware knowledge loss when the physical device remains operational but the information required to identify, configure, safely operate, repair, troubleshoot, or integrate it into contemporary software environments is unavailable, incompatible, incomplete, or inaccessible.
Hardware knowledge loss affects right-to-repair, preservation, open hardware, industrial maintenance, scientific equipment, accessibility devices, education, sustainability, and long-lived infrastructure.
It is also becoming more important in the age of AI-assisted engineering. AI tools can help explain, scaffold, translate, and test technical knowledge, but they need trustworthy inputs. A future tool cannot recover a missing register map, undocumented timing constraint, electrical safety limit, or initialization quirk if that knowledge was never preserved.
HI-M is a proposal to preserve that knowledge closer to the device.
HI-M does not claim that hardware metadata is new. Existing systems already help machines discover, enumerate, configure, describe, manage, or document hardware. Important adjacent systems include:
- USB descriptors
- PCI and PCIe configuration space
- Device Tree
- ACPI
- CMSIS-SVD
- IP-XACT / IEEE 1685
- SMBIOS
- Redfish
- SPDX / SBOM
- firmware metadata
- open-source hardware documentation
- right-to-repair documentation
- datasheets and application notes
- driver source code and hardware abstraction layers
These systems should be acknowledged and reused where appropriate. HI-M is intended to complement them, not dismiss or replace them.
Existing systems often focus on identification, enumeration, configuration, management, or component-level description. HI-M proposes preserving a broader knowledge package for long-term interpretability.
An HI Manifest may include:
- identity and version information
- interfaces and protocol details
- capabilities and operating modes
- registers, commands, and data formats
- initialization and shutdown sequences
- safety limits and forbidden operations
- known quirks and workarounds
- diagnostic and conformance tests
- provenance, signatures, and version history
- human-readable rationale and troubleshooting notes
- examples for engineers and future tooling
The point is not merely that a host can recognize a device. The point is that future systems can understand enough about the device to reason about it safely, test it, document it, and recover interoperability paths.
HI-M is not:
- a claim that drivers can disappear entirely
- a proposal to let LLMs blindly generate trusted kernel code
- a replacement for existing hardware standards
- a finished engineering standard
- a patent claim
- a commercial product
- a guarantee of permanent compatibility
- a substitute for security review
- a substitute for firmware updates or driver maintenance
- a claim that Markdown alone is sufficient
HI-M does not eliminate drivers. It reduces dependence on disappearing external driver packages and documentation by preserving the device-side knowledge needed for future interoperability, diagnostics, configuration, and AI-assisted driver scaffolding.
whitepaper/hardware-intelligence-manifest-v0.1.md: the initial concept paper.spec/hi-manifest-v0.1-draft.md: a non-normative draft specification outline.examples/i2c-temperature-sensor/: a small illustrative sensor example.examples/usb-audio-interface-outline/: an intentionally incomplete USB audio outline showing a more complex device class.docs/author-note.md: author positioning and intent.docs/prior-art-map.md: adjacent systems and how HI-M might relate to them.docs/terminology.md: key terms used in this repository.docs/what-hi-m-is-not.md: explicit boundaries and non-claims.docs/handoff-for-engineers.md: areas requiring technical development.docs/open-questions.md: unresolved questions for future contributors.docs/announcement-posts.md: draft outreach copy.
Christian Anderson is the originator of the Hardware Intelligence Manifest concept and the author of the initial concept framing.
He is not claiming to be a hardware engineer, device-driver developer, academic researcher, standards-body representative, or implementation expert. The intended contribution is conceptual: naming the problem of hardware knowledge loss and proposing a durable, machine-readable and human-readable hardware knowledge package as a direction for engineers and relevant communities to explore.
Preferred positioning:
Christian Anderson, originator of the Hardware Intelligence Manifest concept: an open proposal for future-readable hardware documentation and AI-assisted device interoperability.
Preferred citation:
Christian Anderson, Hardware Intelligence Manifest: An Open Concept Paper for Future-Readable Hardware, v0.1.1, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20600118
This repository includes CITATION.cff for citation tooling. Use the version DOI above to cite the archived v0.1.1 release. Use the concept DOI to refer to the overall project across versions.
Technical criticism is welcome. Especially useful feedback may come from embedded systems engineers, device-driver developers, operating-system maintainers, open-hardware communities, right-to-repair advocates, preservationists, security reviewers, standards practitioners, and AI-tooling researchers.
Useful critique includes:
- which parts are already solved by existing systems
- which claims are too broad or technically naive
- which device classes would make good first test cases
- which fields are necessary for a minimal useful manifest
- which threat models must be addressed before any implementation
- how this could reuse existing schemas instead of inventing new ones
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt this work, including for commercial purposes, with attribution to Christian Anderson as the original author of the Hardware Intelligence Manifest concept paper.