Suggested formatting templates called Data Implementation Possibilities which people can optionally agree to use for any common data types contained in text articles, in accordance with NIP-157.

A NIP-157 Data Implementation Possibility consists of a suggested formatting template, a category of data it can contain, and some suggested optional functionality it can enable.

At the protocol level, data from DIPs should be processed by number instead of name, so each DIP can have translated names without issue. For example, the English term for DIP-1 data is “geographic coordinates,” but indexes should maintain compatibility by translating that in English frontends from category #1 in backend.

NIP-157 data categories are not nevent kinds. Unlike nevent kinds, each DIP should automatically have the same number as its data category, and the first 7 digits worth of data category numbers should be reserved as such (leaving 8-digit-or-longer numbers free to specify separately as with nevent kinds, especially helpful if a single DIP pertains to more than one category of data). This is not meant to imply DIPs must be created and listed in order.

NIP-157 is originally intended to augment machine readability in NIP-54 wiki entries, without sacrificing human readability. A similar, older concept is the “template” functionality in other software suites like MediaWiki (used on Wikipedia).