@paul_gehrig Thanks for the thoughtful breakdown and for looping back to some of the earlier ideas!
I completely agree with your take on standardized descriptive fields like Eligibility and Funding Instrument. From the perspective of someone actively building with grant-seeking users in mind (GrantMatch AI+), inconsistent formatting across those fields has a big ripple effect. If these data points were standardized, it would seriously improve downstream usability for platforms that rely on structured querying and AI interpretation.
Your suggestion to analyze custom field usage across posters is excellent. It could even feed into a community-driven schema evolution process — something like an RFC-lite workflow for new field proposals?
And yes, huge +1 on saved searches and notifications. While it may sit outside the protocol’s MVP, I think enabling such a layer via smart rate limits and webhook support would open the door for platforms like mine to build meaningful alert systems around real-time updates — especially for smaller orgs and solo seekers who don’t have time to check listings every day.
Totally on board with what you said around UX research, too. Sometimes the data spec gets all the love, but adoption hinges on how usable that spec feels on the ground. If the protocol can flexibly support real-world use cases while keeping the dev experience smooth, it’s going to go far.
Appreciate the energy you’re bringing to this conversation — it’s been a great space to learn from each other and push new ideas forward. 
— Bash
Founder, InterGemm | Creator of GrantMatch AI+
https://dot.cards/intergemm