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Serializer

DTO ↔ wire formats live in serenade-serializer.

Formats

Section titled “Formats”
Format Cargo feature Typical consumer
JSON (FORMAT_JSON) always on HTTP, OpenAPI, MCP tool wire
TOON v4.1 (FORMAT_TOON) toon LLM / agent context export (prompt packs)

TOON is not a config format and does not replace JSON on the wire. Same intermediate serde_json::Value hub; apps enable serenade-serializer/toon and call encode_toon_string (or serialize(..., "toon")) when stuffing large structured dumps into model messages.

Spec: TOON v4.1. Rust codec: reddb-io-toon.

Pieces

Section titled “Pieces”
Type Role
Encoder / Decoder Value ↔ bytes for a named format
JsonEncoder / JsonDecoder Built-in JSON
ToonEncoder / ToonDecoder Built-in TOON when feature toon
encode_toon_string UTF-8 TOON string for system / user prompts
Normalizer / Denormalizer / NormalizerRegistry Object ↔ Value
Serializer Normalize then encode; decode then denormalize
Serde bridge Typed JSON helpers (serialize_value / deserialize_value)

Enable TOON

Section titled “Enable TOON”
serenade-serializer = { version = "0.1", features = ["toon"] }
use serde_json::json;
use serenade_serializer::encode_toon_string;


let context = encode_toon_string(&json!({ "sku": "HOODIE", "qty": 2 }))?;
// inject `context` into an LLM message; keep MCP/HTTP payloads as JSON

Non-goals

Section titled “Non-goals”
  • SOAP / XML “web services”
  • TOON as application config (use TOML / YAML)
  • Auto-enabling TOON in FrameworkBundle (apps opt in)