Misty DOI

Muh Mitha Kijiye!™

Browser-first, CLI-first, automation-first DOI minting and research/artifact publication packaging. No backend, no subscription, no vendor lock-in.

Project ILM · Copyright © 1993–2026 Abhishek Choudhary · GPL-3.0-or-later

Misty turns a single canonical metadata file into a complete, reproducible publication package — Zenodo deposit, DataCite record, codemeta.json, CITATION.cff, SHA-256 checksums, OpenTimestamps proofs — and mints a DOI on Zenodo. The same logic runs in your terminal, your CI pipeline, or fully in the browser with no server.

General-purpose

Misty mints DOIs and builds publication packages for any artifact (software, dataset, publication, poster, presentation, image, video, lesson, workflow) and any author. Start with misty init or copy an examples/ template.

The one idea

Separate metadata from mechanism. Any workflow that wants a DOI only has to:

1. produce a canonical metadata file (misty.json),
2. export ZENODO_TOKEN,
3. call one command.

Everything vendor-specific (Zenodo's API shape, DataCite's schema, CFF's YAML) is derived by Misty. Upstream never learns a vendor format. See docs/AUTOMATION.md for the full integration contract.

export ZENODO_TOKEN=…           # the only secret, only from the environment
misty publish -m misty.json -f artifact.zip --output result.json
DOI=$(jq -r .doi result.json)   # done

Install

pip install misty-doi              # core (requests only)
pip install "misty-doi[all]"       # + YAML, JSON-Schema, OpenTimestamps

No-install path (CI / air-gapped): scripts/zenodo-publish.sh needs only bash, curl, and python3.

CLI in 60 seconds

misty init                                   # write a metadata template
misty validate -m misty.json                 # check it
misty transform -m misty.json -o build/      # -> zenodo/datacite/codemeta/CFF
misty package  -m misty.json -f a.zip -o doi-package/   # offline package + checksums
misty publish  -m misty.json -f a.zip        # deposit + upload + publish -> DOI
misty publish  -m misty.json -f a.zip --sandbox        # rehearse on sandbox.zenodo.org
misty publish  -m misty.json -f a.zip --dry-run        # package only, no network
misty ots stamp doi-package/a.zip            # OpenTimestamps proof

Full reference: docs/CLI.md.

What gets produced

doi-package/
├── <artifact>            artifact file(s), copied in
├── <artifact>.sha256     checksum per file
├── metadata.json         canonical Misty record
├── zenodo.json           Zenodo deposit body  {"metadata": {…}}
├── datacite.json         DataCite 4.x
├── codemeta.json         schema.org SoftwareSourceCode
├── CITATION.cff          CFF 1.2.0 (valid YAML)
├── manifest.json         release + reproducibility manifest
└── README.md             human-readable summary

The package contains no secrets and is safe to commit, attach to a GitHub release, or hand to an air-gapped reviewer.

Browser mode

Open web/index.html (or the GitHub Pages deployment). Build metadata in a form, download every target file, generate copy-paste AI prompts for metadata drafting, and — optionally — publish directly to Zenodo with a token that never leaves your browser. Project ILM receives nothing.

Security model

• The token is read only from the environment (CLI) or held only in the browser tab (web). Misty never writes it to disk and never transmits it anywhere except Zenodo.
• No telemetry. No backend. No accounts.
• Offline packages are deterministic and checksummed for independent verification.

See SECURITY.md.

Documentation

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. The tool is free software; the artifacts you publish carry whatever license you declare in your metadata.