Call for Participation in Portable Web Content Format (PortableWeb) Community Group

The Portable Web Content Format (PortableWeb) Community Group has been launched:

AI-assisted tools can now generate high-quality interactive web content —games, presentations, simulations, educational materials— in minutes. This has created a massive and growing category of ephemeral Web applications that need to be shared and used immediately across devices and platforms, without a traditional server for distribution, without association with a Web origin, and without being confined to a web browser.

No existing format treats interactive web content as a portable, self-contained, immediately runnable unit. PDF loses interactivity. EPUB3 is constrained to a document and book model — its JavaScript support is an enhancement to a reading experience, not a general-purpose runtime. Web Bundles never achieved broad implementation and was designed as a network transport optimization, not a portable execution environment. The Web Application Manifest describes server-hosted apps and requires a live web origin. None of these addresses the need for content that has no server, no origin, and no installation —content that should exist, run, and be shared as a single portable file, across all platforms, entirely offline.

This mission of this group is to develop an open specification for a self-contained portable web content format that can be instantly shared and run on any platform —desktop, mobile, or offline— without a server, app store, or deployment pipeline. The format is content-model agnostic, equally supporting books, games, presentations, educational simulations, 3D experiences, scientific models, and collaborative applications.

The scope of work includes:

• Container and packaging format
• Manifest schema for capability and permission declaration
• Viewer conformance requirements and security sandboxing model
• Storage model —per-bundle isolated storage specification, defining how packaged content can persist state locally, how storage is scoped and sandboxed to the bundle, and guidelines for storage portability across viewer implementations.
• Inter-bundle communication model — a permission-gated channel specification enabling bundles to communicate locally via Bluetooth, WiFi Direct, or local network, making offline multiplayer, peer-to-peer, and collaborative interactive experiences possible without any server infrastructure. This is a genuinely novel capability not addressed by any existing format or specification.

In addition to a Specification, this group expects to create a Viewer conformance test suite, and a non-normative implementation guide for content creators, AI tools, and viewer developers.

In order to join the group, you will need a W3C account. Please note, however, that W3C Membership is not required to join a Community Group.

This is a community initiative. This group was originally proposed on 2026-06-05 by Omprakash Selvaraj. The following people supported its creation: Omprakash Selvaraj, Shalini Induchoodan Meenakumari, Meenakumari Induchoodan, Harish Omprakash and Selvaraj Nanjappan. W3C’s hosting of this group does not imply endorsement of the activities.

The group must now choose a chair. Read more about how to get started in a new group and good practice for running a group.

We invite you to share news of this new group on social media and other channels.

If you believe that there is an issue with this group that requires the attention of the W3C staff, please email us at site-comments@w3.org

Thank you,
W3C Community Development Team