1. Philosophy
Addonium exists to make three things true at once:
| Principle | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Author sovereignty | The author who wrote the addon decides its access model: open to everyone, locked behind a token, restricted to specific client apps, or all three at once. The host app must respect this and must not offer a way to route around it (no "force unlock," no stripping auth headers, no re-hosting a locked addon's stream without the author's key). |
| Zero mandatory infrastructure | No addon needs Cloudflare Workers, no addon needs a database, no addon needs to talk to any Addonium-run server. A single static manifest.json file is a valid, complete Open Addon. |
| Progressive trust | Everything past the bare minimum (search + stream) is optional. An addon declares what it supports via resources; a host falls back gracefully when a capability is absent. Nothing is required beyond what the author chooses to implement. |
Addonium is a specification, not a service. There is no central Addonium server that addons must register with, phone home to, or be approved by. A registry/index (§12.4) is an optional convenience, not a gatekeeper.