portable-identity-document-template-OPEN/README.md

Portable Identity Document (PID)

Overview

A Portable Identity Document, or PID, is a living document that helps AI systems understand who you are, what you know, what you have done, what you are working on, what you need, and what kinds of people, opportunities, ideas, and resources may be relevant to you.

The PID is not a resume. A resume is optimized for human attention. A PID is optimized for AI comprehension, discovery, and matching.

For most of human history, networking and career growth have been constrained by attention. We join networks, attend events, build audiences, post online, and continuously market ourselves because there is intense competition for limited human attention. Much of modern professional life is spent trying to be seen.

AI does not have the same attention limit. It can process far more information than a person, reason across many signals, and identify patterns that would be impractical for humans to track manually. That changes the job from "shout louder" to "make your signal clearer."

The purpose of a PID is to create a rich, authentic, machine-readable signal about:

• who you are
• what you know
• what you have experienced
• what you care about
• what you are building or exploring
• what you have to offer
• what you need
• where you are headed

The more accurately you represent yourself, the easier it becomes for AI systems to connect you with aligned people, projects, opportunities, resources, and collaborations.

For broader context, read the short white paper on Decentralized AI-Native Professional Networking.

Why This Matters Now

In the attention economy, success often belonged to people who were best at being noticed.

In the emerging signal economy, success increasingly belongs to people who generate meaningful signal by doing real things, learning continuously, building relationships, documenting what they know, and making that context legible to AI.

A PID helps AI systems:

• understand you at a deeper level than a resume can
• identify high-quality matches and opportunities
• surface relevant collaborators, roles, problems, and ideas
• understand what you have that others may need
• understand what you need that others may have
• preserve context as your work, interests, and direction evolve

The quality of what you get out is directly tied to the quality of what you put in.

Privacy And Control

Your PID is yours. You decide where it lives, what it contains, who can access it, and how much detail it includes.

Do not include sensitive identifiers such as exact addresses, private account numbers, personal IDs, confidential client details, or anything you would not want accessible through the PID link. City, state, and country are usually enough for location context.

The recommended pattern is to keep a maintained source document and share a URL to that source, rather than sending static copies that quickly go out of date.

What's In This Repo

This repository contains the core materials for creating and maintaining a PID.

• PID-template.md: the main PID template. Start here to understand the sections your PID should include.
• skills/PID-initial-creation-skill.md: an AI-agent skill for turning your existing materials into a first PID draft. Use this skill to have AI create your PID for you.
• skills/PID-update-maintenance-skill.md: an AI-agent skill for reviewing your recent activity and drafting updates to keep your PID fresh. Use this skill to have AI maintain your PID for you.
• skills/PID-update-maintenance-skill-user-variables.md: a user-owned companion configuration file for the maintenance skill. Put your PID path, approved source locations, privacy rules, output folders, section preferences, and user-specific workflow adjustments here instead of editing the main maintenance skill.
• PID-maturity-model-roadmap.md: a roadmap for moving from a simple PID document toward a structured, agent-native, and eventually agent-maintained identity layer.

Start Here

Download This Repository

If you use Git, you can sync it to your Git. If you do not use git, download this repository into a folder onto your local machine. Your PID and all supporting materials and the future work to maintain your PID will want to live in this directoruy on your machine. Be sure to back up this directory. If you use Google Drive or Microsft OneDrive, for example, put the folder there and they will stay synced online.

1. Gather Your Materials

Collect whatever you already have. You do not need everything, but more context helps.

Useful materials include:

• resume
• LinkedIn profile
• short bio or long bio
• personal website or portfolio
• project notes
• work samples
• case studies
• writing samples
• social posts or newsletters
• product or service descriptions
• business descriptions
• personality or strengths assessments
• testimonials or endorsements
• certifications
• event participation
• current goals
• list of what you need
• list of what you can offer
• anything you want AI systems to understand about you

2. Give The Template And Skill To Your AI Agent

Use an AI agent that can read files or pasted text, such as Codex Desktop, Claude Desktop, ChatGPT with file access, or another local/cloud AI tool.

Give the agent:

1. your source materials
2. PID-template.md
3. skills/PID-initial-creation-skill.md

Then ask it to create your first PID draft.

Suggested prompt:

Use the PID Initial Creation Skill to create my first Portable Identity Document.

I am providing:
1. my source materials
2. the PID template
3. the PID initial creation skill

Create:
- PID-draft.md
- PID-review-checklist.md

Follow the PID template flow. Do not invent claims. Flag anything uncertain. Remove or flag privacy-sensitive details. Make the PID specific, authentic, and useful for AI agents to understand what I know, what I have, what I need, what I am working on, and what kinds of opportunities or collaborators would be relevant.

3. Review And Edit The Draft

The AI-generated draft is a starting point, not the final authority.

Review it for:

• accuracy
• missing context
• privacy risks
• generic language
• unsupported claims
• sections that need more specificity
• proof links or artifacts you can add
• needs and offers that should be clearer

The goal is not to sound polished in a generic way. The goal is to be specific, authentic, and easy for AI systems to understand.

4. Publish A Maintained URL

Save your PID somewhere that can produce a URL:

• Google Doc
• Microsoft Word document in OneDrive
• Markdown file in a public GitHub repository
• PDF hosted in cloud storage
• personal website page
• a future structured PID repository

Share the URL to the maintained source. Do not rely on static copies that will become stale.

Keep Your PID Fresh

A PID should be a living document. If it goes stale, its usefulness declines.

Run skills/PID-update-maintenance-skill.md regularly, preferably weekly.

Before running it, fill out or maintain skills/PID-update-maintenance-skill-user-variables.md. This companion file is where your personal variables live:

• current PID location and format
• default review timeframe
• review draft and receipt output folders
• approved local, cloud, email, calendar, repository, transcript, database, and publishing sources
• sources that are not authorized
• privacy boundaries
• update goals
• section, voice, evidence, and receipt preferences
• user-specific adjustments to how the maintenance skill should behave

Keep those variables outside the main skill. The main maintenance skill may be improved over time, and your user variables file should persist across those updates.

The maintenance skill is designed to help an AI agent review user-approved sources such as:

• local project folders
• notes and documents
• Git repositories
• emails
• calendar events
• meeting transcripts
• chat exports
• CSV, JSON, spreadsheet, or database exports
• writing and publishing folders
• learning logs and research notes
• portfolio artifacts

The maintenance skill follows a review-first process:

1. You fill out or update PID-update-maintenance-skill-user-variables.md.
2. You ask the agent to run the maintenance skill.
3. The agent reads the user variables file, then asks only for missing or ambiguous values.
4. The agent confirms the current PID, timeframe, approved sources, output location, and privacy boundaries.
5. The agent scans the selected timeframe, usually the last 7 days unless your variables specify otherwise.
6. The agent creates a local Markdown review draft.
7. You edit, delete, correct, or add context.
8. Only after approval does the agent append updates to your PID.

Suggested weekly prompt:

Use the PID Update Maintenance Skill to update my Portable Identity Document.

My PID is here: [path or link]
Review this timeframe: last 7 days
Save the review draft here: [folder]

Use my companion variables file beside the skill:
skills/PID-update-maintenance-skill-user-variables.md

Approved sources, with exact locations or access scopes:
- Local PC folders: [full paths]
- Cloud files/folders/connectors: [Google Drive/OneDrive/Dropbox/etc. paths, links, or connector scopes]
- Email accounts or labels: [account + labels/queries]
- Calendar range/account: [calendar + date range]
- Meeting transcript folders or recording exports: [full paths or links]
- Git repositories, including histories: [full paths or remotes]
- CSV/JSON/database/spreadsheet exports: [full paths or links]
- Publishing/content/social/newsletter sources: [paths, exports, or accounts]
- Other sources: [exact source and access method]

Do not assume the PID repo or the folder containing my PID is an approved source unless I list it above or include it in my user variables file.

Privacy boundaries:
- never include [items]
- generalize [items]
- ask before including [items]

First create a local Markdown review draft organized by my PID sections. Do not update the PID until I review and approve the draft.

What To Capture

Be thorough. Small signals matter.

Your PID can include:

• accomplishments
• projects
• current focus
• experiments
• research
• needs
• offers
• constraints
• relationships
• introductions
• tools and systems
• data and content assets
• products and services
• proof of work
• publications
• events
• certifications
• recommendations
• frameworks
• observations
• insights
• learnings
• aha moments
• questions
• values
• work style
• ideal collaborators
• non-ideal matches

AI does not reliably infer uniqueness unless it is explicitly encoded, repeated, and structured. If something matters to your work, your direction, or the kinds of matches you want, put it in the PID.

Where This Can Go

Start simple. A single Google Doc, OneDrive document, Markdown file, or hosted PDF is enough.

Then, when useful, use PID-maturity-model-roadmap.md to evolve your PID.

The maturity model moves through stages such as:

• basic PID document
• structured PID document
• PID repository
• structured PID repository
• agent-native PID
• published identity site
• agent-maintained PID
• agent-to-agent networking

The long-term direction is that your PID becomes the public interface between your private agent and the broader network of people, opportunities, and other agents.

Where To Submit Your PID

Go to https://indx.earth for a list of networks being created where you can submit your PID to begin networking in the AI era.

Admin

When skills are processed, a receipt of what was done is saved in the skills-receipt folder. Leave them there for logging and historical purposes.

Core Principle

The resume is obsolete.

The PID is a richer, portable, user-owned identity layer for the AI era.

The goal is not to market yourself louder. The goal is to become easier to understand, easier to match, and easier to find for the right reasons.