TOON: Token-Oriented Object Notation

TOON (Token-Oriented Object Notation) is a lightweight, human-readable data serialization format designed to be token-efficient for Large Language Models (LLMs) while remaining easy for humans to read and write.

It serves as a concise alternative to JSON, removing syntactic noise (like excessive quotes, braces, and brackets) to reduce token usage and improve clarity.

JSON is verbose. For LLMs (like GPT-4, Claude, Gemini), every character counts. TOON reduces the token footprint by eliminating structural overhead, which can lead to:

• Lower Costs: Fewer tokens processed means lower API bills.
• Larger Context: Fit more data into the model's context window.
• Faster Generation: Less syntax for the model to generate.

TOON looks like a clean configuration file or a summary report. It uses significant whitespace and minimal punctuation, making it ideal for:

• Logs and debug output.
• Configuration files.
• Data summaries for dashboards.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'toonify'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install toonify

The toonify gem provides a simple API to convert between JSON and TOON.

require 'toonify'

# Input JSON
json_data = '{"name": "Alice", "role": "Engineer", "active": true}'

# Encode JSON -> TOON
toon_output = Toonify::Toon.encode(json_data)
puts toon_output
# Output:
# name: Alice
# role: Engineer
# active: true

# Decode TOON -> JSON
json_output = Toonify::Toon.decode(toon_output)
puts json_output
# Output: {"name":"Alice","role":"Engineer","active":true}

TOON shines with nested structures and arrays. It automatically detects tabular data and formats it concisely.

The converter is strict about input types to ensure reliability.

begin
  Toonify::Toon.encode('invalid json')
rescue ArgumentError => e
  puts e.message # => "Invalid JSON input"
end

TOON uses a few simple rules:

• Key-Value: key: value
• Nested Objects: Indented blocks (YAML-style).
• Primitive Arrays: key[count]: val1,val2,val3
• Object Arrays (Tabular): key[count]{headers}: followed by CSV-like rows.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/ran010/toonify.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.