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This document specifies the Gemini protocol for file transfer. It can be thought of as an incremental improvement over Gopher [RFC1436] rather than a stripped down HTTP [RFC7230]. It runs over TCP [STD7] port 1965 with encryption provided by TLS [RFC8446] with a simple request and response transaction. It can serve arbitrary digital content with a specific MIME type [RFC2045], but is most frequently used to serve lightweight hypertext documents which use a related by separately specified format:
See also the Gemini hypertext format, aka "gemtext", specification
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [BCP14].
An overriding goal of Gemini is to provide a simple protocol that is easy to implement (requiring a day or two of effort and only a few hundred lines for a server or a client) while still being useful.
Gemini is served over TCP on port 1965 by default (the first manned Gemini mission, Gemini 3, flew in March 1965), using TLS to provide an encrypted transaction. Servers and clients MUST support TLS 1.2 or higher. The type of TLS certificate used (CA-based or self-signed) is specified in a "best practices" document as details are still being discussed. The default port of 1965 is an unpriviledged port on most systems, so the use of an administrative account is not required to run the service.
Addressing in Gemini is based on URIs [STD66], with the following modifications:
1. the scheme used is "gemini";
2. the userinfo portion of a URI MUST NOT be used;
3. a empty path component and a path component of "/" are equivalent and servers MUST support both without sending a redirection;
4. the port defaults to 1965 if not specified;
5. the use of an IP address in the authority section SHOULD NOT be used.
While this document just covers the protocol with some mandates for what clients and servers have to do, there are other aspects of Gemini that aren't covered here in the specification which fall outside the core protocol. Implementors of both clients and servers are RECOMMENDED to follow the best practice guide for the Gemini protocol.
The client connects to the server and sends a request which consists of an absolute URI followed by a CR (character 13) and LF (character 10). The augmented BNF [STD68] for this is:
request = absolute-URI CRLF ; absolute-URI from [STD66] ; CRLF from [STD68]
When making a request, the URI MUST NOT exceed 1024 bytes, and a server MUST reject requests where the URI exceeds this limit. A server MUST reject a request with a userinfo portion. Clients MUST NOT send a fragment as part of the request, and a server MUST reject such requests as well. If a client is making a request with an empty path, the client SHOULD add a trailing '/' to the request, but a server MUST be able to deal with an empty path.
Upon a request, the server will send back a status and in the case of a successful request, the content requested by the client. The status consists of a two digit response code, possibly some additional information (which depends upon the response being sent) followed by a CR and LF. The augmented BNF:
reply = input / success / redirect / tempfail / permfail / auth
input = "1" DIGIT SP prompt CRLF
success = "2" DIGIT SP mimetype CRLF body
redirect = "3" DIGIT SP URI-reference CRLF
; NOTE: [STD66] allows "" as a valid
; URI-reference. This is not intended to
; be valid for cases of redirection.
tempfail = "4" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF
permfail = "5" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF
auth = "6" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF
prompt = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
mimetype = type "/" subtype *(";" parameter)
errormsg = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
body = *OCTET
VCHAR =/ UTF8-2v / UTF8-3 / UTF8-4
UTF8-2v = %xC2 %xA0-BF UTF8-tail ; no C1 control set
/ %xC3-DF UTF8-tail
; URI-reference from [STD66]
;
; type from [RFC2045]
; subtype from [RFC2045]
; parameter from [RFC2045]
;
; CRLF from [STD68]
; DIGIT from [STD68]
; SP from [STD68]
; VCHAR from [STD68]
; OCTET from [STD68]
; WSP from [STD68]
;
; UTF8-3 from [STD63]
; UTF8-4 from [STD63]
; UTF8-tail from [STD63]
The VCHAR rule from [STD68] is extended to include the non-control codepoints from Unicode (and encoded as UTF-8 [STD63]). The body type is unspecified here, as the contents depend upon the MIME type of the content being served. Upon sending the complete response (which may include content), the server closes the connection and MUST use the TLS close_notify mechanism to inform the client that no more data will be sent.
The status values range from 10 to 69 inclusive, although not all values are currently defined. They are grouped such that a client MAY use the initial digit to handle the response, but the additional digit is there to further clarify the status, and it is RECOMMENDED that clients use the addtional digit when deciding what to do. Servers MUST NOT send status codes that are not defined.
There are six groups of status codes:
A client MUST reject any status code less than '10' and greater than '69' and warn the user of such. A client SHOULD deal with undefined status codes between '10' and '69' per the default action of the initial digit. So a status of '14' should be acted upon as if the client received a '10'; a status of '22' should be acted upon as if the client received a '20'.
The server is expecting user input from the client. The additional information sent after the status code is the text that a client MUST use to prompt the user for the information, and that information is sent back to the same URI as the query portion. Spaces MUST be encoded as '%20'. Clients MAY allow for the entry of input comprised of multiple lines and in such cases the linebreaks SHOULD be encoded as '%0A', while servers SHOULD recognise both '%0A' and '%0D%0A' as linebreaks. There are currently two status codes defined under this category.
input = "1" DIGIT SP prompt CRLF prompt = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
If a client receives a 1x response to a URI that already contains a query string, the client MUST replace the query string with the user input. For example, if the given URI results in a 10 response:
gemini://example.net/search?hello
The client will send as a request:
gemini://example.net/search?the%20user%20input
The basic input status code. A client MUST prompt a user for input, it should be URI-encoded per [STD66] and sent as a query to the same URI that generated this response.
As per status code 10, but for use with sensitive input such as passwords. Clients should present the prompt as per status code 10, but the user's input should not be echoed to the screen to prevent it being read by "shoulder surfers".
The request was handled and the server has content to send to the client. The additional information is the MIME type of the content, specified per [RFC2045]. Client MUST deal with MIME parameters that are not understood by simply ignoring them.
Response bodies are just raw content, text or binary, like with gopher [RFC1436]. There is no support for compression, chunking or any other kind of content or transfer encoding. The server closes the connection after the final byte, there is no "end of response" signal.
Internet media types are registered with a canonical form. Content transferred via Gemini MUST be represented in the appropriate canonical form prior to its transmission except for "text" types, as defined in the next paragraph.
When in canonical form, media subtypes of the "text" type use CRLF as the text line break. Gemini relaxes this requirement and allows the transport of text media with plain LF alone (but NOT a plain CR alone) representing a line break when it is done consistently for an entire response body. Gemini clients MUST accept CRLF and bare LF as being representative of a line break in text media received via Gemini.
Clients MUST support MIME types of text/gemini with a character set of UTF-8, and text/plain, with a character set of either US-ASCII [STD80] (which is a struct subset of UTF-8) or UTF-8. A client MAY support text/plain with other character sets. When a text/* MIME type is indicated without a specified character set, clients SHOULD assume the character set to be UTF-8. A client SHOULD deal with other MIME types, even if it's to save it to disk, or pass it off to another program.
The specification for text/gemini is given in the text/gemini specification.
The only defined status under this group is 20.
success = "2" DIGIT SP mimetype CRLF body
mimetype = type "/" subtype *(";" parameter)
body = *OCTET
The server has successfully parsed and understood the request, and will serve up content of the given MIME type.
The server is sending the client a new location where the content is located. The additional information is an absolute or relative URI. If a server sends a redirection in response to a request with a query string, the client MUST NOT apply the query string to the new location; if the query string is important to the new location, the server MAY include the query as part of the redirection. A server SHOULD NOT include fragments in redirections, but if one is given, and a client already has a fragment it could apply (from the original URI), it is up to the client which fragment to apply. Client MUST limit the number of redirections they follow to 5 redirections. There are two defined status code in this category.
redirect = "3" DIGIT SP URI-reference CRLF
; NOTE: RFC-3987/3987 allow "" as a valid
; URI-reference. This is not intended to
; be valid for cases of redirection.
The basic redirection code. The redirection is temporary and the client should continue to request the content with the original URI.
The location of the content has moved permanently to a new location, and clients SHOULD use the new location to retrieve the given content from then on.
The request has failed. There is no response body. The nature of the failure is temporary, i.e. an identical request MAY succeed in the future. The optional message MAY provide additional information on the failure and if given, a client SHOULD display it to the user. There are five status codes under this category.
tempfail = "4" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF
errormsg = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
An unspecified condition exists on the server that is preventing the content from being served, but a client can try again to obtain the content.
The server is unavailable due to overload or maintenance. (cf HTTP 503)
A CGI process, or similar system for generating dynamic content, died unexpectedly or timed out.
A proxy request failed because the server was unable to successfully complete a transaction with the remote host. (cf HTTP 502, 504)
The server is requesting the client to slow down requests, and SHOULD use an exponential back off, where subsequent delays between requests are doubled until this status no no longer returned.
The request has failed. There is no response body. The nature of the failure is permanent, and futher requests of the content will return the same status and a client SHOULD NOT make the same request. The optional message MAY provide additional information on the failure and if given, a clieht SHOULD display it to the user. There are five status codes under this category.
permfail = "5" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF errormsg = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
This is the general permanent failure code.
The requested resource could not be found (you can't find things at Area 51) and no further information is available. It may exist in the future, it may not. Who knows?
The resource requested is no longer available and will not be available again. Search engines and similar tools should remove this resource from their indices. Content aggregators should stop requesting the resource and convey to their human users that the subscribed resource is gone. (cf HTTP 410)
The request was for a resource at a domain not served by the server and the server does not accept proxy requests.
The server was unable to parse the client's request, presumably due to a malformed request, or the request violated the contraints listed in the Request section.
The requested resource requires a client certificate to access, e.g. for reasons of access control or to facilitate maintaining server-side state in an application. If the request was made without a certificate, it should be repeated with one. If the request was made with a certificate, the server did not accept it and the request should be repeated with a different certificate. The additional information may contain more details about why the certificate was required, or rejected; servers SHOULD include such information, and clients SHOULD display it to the user. There are three status codes defined for this category.
auth = "6" DIGIT [SP errormsg] CRLF errormsg = 1*(SP / VCHAR)
The content requires a client certificate. The client MUST provide a certificate in order to access the content and SHOULD NOT repeat the request without one. The scope of a certificate generated in response to this status code should is limited to the host and port from which the status code was received and the path of the URL in the original request plus all paths below it. A server MAY require a different certificate for a different path on the same host and port. A server SHOULD allow the same certificate to be used for any content along the given path. Examples:
gemini://example.com/private/ -- requires certificate A gemini://example.com/private/r1 -- requires certificate A gemini://example.com/private/r2/r3 -- requires certificate A gemini://example.com/other/ -- requires certificate B gemini://example.com/other/r1 -- requires certificate B gemini://example.com/other/r2/r3 -- requires certificate B gemini://example.com/random -- no certificate required
Clients MUST NOT automatically generate a client certificate and use it to repeat the request without the active involvement of the user. Clients MUST NOT use a client certificate generated in response to this status code for a request to a different host, a different port, or a path on the same host and port which is above the the path of the URL in the original request unless directed to do so by the user.
The supplied client certificate is not authorised for accessing the particular requested resource. The problem is not with the certificate itself, which may be authorised for other resources.
The supplied client certificate was not accepted because it is not valid. This indicates a problem with the certificate in and of itself, with no consideration of the particular requested resource. The most likely cause is that the certificate's validity start date is in the future or its expiry date has passed, but this code may also indicate an invalid signature, or a violation of a X509 standard requirements.
At the time of writing (2021), not all existing TLS libraries support TLS 1.3, but a majority (all?) do support TLS 1.2, thus TLS 1.2 is the minimum required version. Implementators should be aware that TLS 1.2 will send the server name and the client certificate (if used) in the clear as part of the encryption negotiation phase of the protocol. A client MAY warn a user if a TLS 1.2 connection is established, and SHOULD warn the user when a client certifiate will be transmitted via TLS 1.2.
Gemini servers MUST use the TLS close_notify implementation to close the connection. Clients SHOULD NOT close a connection by default, but MAY in case the content exceeds constraints set by the user. Both clients and servers SHOULD handle the case when the TLS close_notify mechanism is not used (such as a low level socket error that closes the socket without properly terminating the TLS connection). A client SHOULD notify the user of such a case; the server MAY log such a case.
Client and server implementations MUST support TLS SNI (Server Name Indication) and clients MUST include hostname information when making requests for URLs where the authority section is a hostname.
The Gemini protocol specification does not dictate a particular method which clients must use for validating receied server certificates. Gemini implementations have experimented informally since the protocol's origin with "alternative" validation schemes other than the widely used approach of relying on a list of pre-trusted Certificate Authorities supplied with the operating system and/or web browser. Formal specifications of such approaches may evolve out of solidifing practices.
Clients are strongly RECOMMENDED to use a Trust on First Use or "TOFU" certificate-pinning system, which does not reject self-signed certificates as invalid, as the basis of their validation system. Under such an sytem, the first time a Gemini client connects to a server, it accepts whichever certificate it is presented. That certificate's fingerprint and expiry date are saved in a persistent database, associated with the server's hostname and port. On all subsequent connections to the same hostname on the same port, the received certificate's fingerprint is computed and compared against the one stored in the database. If the fingerprints do not match but the previous certificate's expiry date has not passed, this is considered potential evidence of a Man-In-The-Middle attack. Clients MAY augment this basic system with additional security measures, e.g. comparing certificates received from multiple network perspectives and/or using DNS-Based Authentication of Named Entities (DANE) [RFC6698].
Gemini clients wanting to request a resource are typically expected to send the appropriate request to the server(s) indicated by the authority component of the resource's gemini:// URL. However, a client MAY be configured instead to send the request to an intermediary server which will connect to the origin server on its behalf and relay the response. Such intermediaries (hereafter "proxies") may themselves use other proxies, forming a proxy chain between a user agent and an origin server.
Gemini proxies can provide utility services including but not limited to:
There is nothing special at the protocol level about Gemini proxies. Clients connect to them, send requests and interpret responses in exactly the same way they connect to "normal" Gemini servers as detailed above. Indeed, every Gemini proxy is also a Gemini server (but not every server is a proxy). The distinguishing characteristic of a Gemini proxy is that it handles requests for resources which "do not belong to them". A proxy does not need to exclusively handle such requests. The same program running on the same machine may act as a proxy in responding to some requests but may not in responding to others.
If a Gemini proxy connects to an origin server and completes a standard Gemini request and response transaction, and the status code of the response received from the origin server is an error code (i.e. it has an initial digit of 4 or 5) then the proxy SHOULD send that same response header to the user agent.
The status code 43, "proxy error", is intended for use in cases where a Gemini proxy was unable to successfully complete a transaction with a remote host. The meaning of "successful" here is NOT receiving a response code of 20, "success". Rather, a proxy should return a response with status code 43 in situations including but not limited to:
A proxy MAY also use status code 43 after completing a Gemini transaction with an origin server and receiving a request for a client certificate, if the proxy has not previoulsy been configured with a client certificate and associated private key to use for the relevant resource. There is no straightforward in-band way for the user agent to generate these and pass them to the proxy for re-use in connecting to the origin server.
Every Gemini proxy is also a "man in the middle" between a user agent and an origin server, and this has implications for privacy and security. Gemini proxies do NOT facilitate end-to-end TLS encryption between user agents and origin servers (they are called proxies and not tunnels for this reason). A Gemini proxy has the ability to arbitrarily modify or to permanently log both responses and requests.
Gemini proxies are therefore intended to be trusted parties. The expected typical usage is for proxies to be either running locally on the same machine as the user agent, or on a different machine on the same local network and operated by the same user. Using a remote Gemini proxy operated by a third party necessitates a high degree of trust in that third party. Careful checking of TLS certificate fingerprints by both the user(s) and operator(s) of a remote proxy can facilitate the sharing of a proxy within a small community with a high degree of internal trust.
In light of the above considerations:
The examples below have two parties, the Server and Client. Actions of each are in square brackets '[]', literal text in quotes (but the quotes are NOT included in the input) with a few terminals like 'CRLF' indicating the characters code 13 and 10, 'mimetype' representing a MIME type per [RFC2045], and 'content...' meaning the content requested.
This examle is a server requiring user input, which the client gathers, then resubmits the request with the user input:
Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/search" CRLF Server: "10 Please input a search term" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [prompts user, gets input] Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/search?gemini%20search%20engines" CRLF Server: "20 " mimetype CRLF content... Server: [closes connection]
The client is requesting some content, which in this example, is an image file:
Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/image.jpg" CRLF Server: "20 image/jpeg" CRLF <binary data of JPEG image> Server: [closes connection]
For this example the server is redirecting the client to the new location of a resource:
Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/current" CRLF Server: "30 /new" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/new" CRLF Server: "20 " mimetype CRLF content... Server: [closes connection]
Here we have a server requesting a client certificate, and the client providing one on the subsequent request:
Client: [opens connection, no client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/protected/" CRLF Server: "60 Certificate required to access this resource" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [does application specific actions to get certificate] Client: [opens connection, client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/protected/" CRLF Server: "20 " mimetype CRLF content... Server: [closes connection]
This example provides a minimal example of combining client certificates and user input to implement an application which maintains per-user server-side state and adds together two numbers.
Client: [opens connection, no client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/application/" CRLF Server: "60 Certificate required to maintain server-side state" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [does application specific actions to get certificate] Client: [opens connection, client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/application/" CRLF Server: "10 Please enter a number between 0 and 9000" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [prompts user, gets input] Client: [opens connection, client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/application/?42" CRLF Server: [recognises client certificate, stores value "42" in memory or on disk in association with certificate] Server: "10 Please enter another number between 0 and 9000" CRLF Server: [closes connection] Client: [prompts user, gets input] Client: [opens connection, client certificate sent] Client: "gemini://example.net/application/?1923" CRLF Server: [recognises client certificate, retrieves stored value "42", adds it to received value "1923"] Server: "20 text/plain" CRLF "42 plus 1923 equals 1965, have a nice day!" Server: [closes connection]
In this example, the server is sending a temporary failure with additional text describing the error:
Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/data" CRLF Server: "41 Undergoing maintanence at this time" CRLF Server: [closes connection]
And the final example, a permanent failure without any further explanation:
Client: [opens connection] Client: "gemini://example.net/data" CRLF Server: "50" CRLF Server: [closes connection]