GA4GH Genomic Knowledge Model (GKM) Community Meeting

Minutes 2026-2027

These are the minutes for the GKM community meetings, which cover VRS, Cat-VRS and VA-Spec. For more about the work stream, see the GKS Work Stream page: https://www.ga4gh.org/work_stream/genomic-knowledge-standards/

Previous meeting notes:

• VRS: GA4GH Variant Representation Meeting Minutes 2025-2026
• Categorical Variation Group Minutes 2026–2027 (Cat-VRS): Categorical Variation Group - Minutes document - 2026-2027
• VA-Spec: GA4GH Var Ann Meeting Minutes 2024-2026

Overview

From November 2026, the separate VRS, Cat-VRS and VA-Spec calls have combined into one GKM community meeting. Bringing everyone together lets us hold project-based discussions across products, the way the standards are used together in real-world implementations.

Meeting details

• When: 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month, 11:00 - 12:00 ET (16:00 UK / 17:00 CET / 08:00 PT)
• Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/7082943722?pwd=dlJidEhSRnUyQmhVdzh5U3FscENxUT09
• GA4GH Calendar: https://www.ga4gh.org/what-we-do/calendar/
• Slack: #gkm-community

Meeting format

• A short GKM core and roadmap update
• Topics planned across all three products, with breakout rooms when several run in parallel
• The agenda, with the topics for each breakout room, is posted here in advance so you can join the discussions most relevant to you. New items and breakout rooms can be added as needed.

Get involved

• To suggest an agenda topic or present your implementation, add it to the agenda below or email beatrice.amos@ga4gh.org.
• To request an ad hoc APAC-friendly session, email beatrice.amos@ga4gh.org with your topic and a few times that suit you.
• Key decisions are recorded in GitHub Issues or Discussions, so they don’t get lost in Slack or meeting notes.

Meeting Protocols

• By taking part in meetings, attendees agree to follow the GA4GH Standards of Professional Conduct.
• Meetings may be recorded for note-taking purposes. Recordings are deleted within three months of the meeting.
• Notes are shared publicly. Please don’t share confidential information during the call.

Table of Contents

Upcoming Meeting Agendas        2

2026-11-19        2

2026-11-05        3

Upcoming Meeting Agendas

2026-11-19

Attendees: Larry Babb, Alex Wagner, Daniel Puthawala, Lee Lichtenstein, Brendan Reardon,

2026-11-05

Attendees: Larry Babb, Alex Wagner, Daniel Puthawala, Lee Lichtenstein, Brendan Reardon, Lishuang Shen, Kyle Ferriter, Melissa Cline, Kahil Lawless, Matthew Brush, Mamana Mbiyavanga, Robert Freimuth, Tao Zhang, Mrinal Thomas, Catherine Procknow, Senkei Umehara, Shelly Goomber, Fabian Castillo, several AI notetaker bots...

Link to meeting recording: https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/T-qk2D2jH-7vsxgJgIh8cf1J6shlJ6WCkWBlp4PmCwocH6SqLC7HWPMzXUPYaXUV.szz1MHlP4dXkvUTX 

Action items:

• All: comment on the Cat-VRS Oncogenicity/Pathogenicity PR #277 by 16 Nov.
• GKM leads: review the mappable measurement concept discussion on Cat-VRS GitHub.
• GKM product leads: draft a framework that defines product features and the evidence or attestation needed to reach Normative, then bring it back to the group.
• Implementers: sign up for Lightning Updates, or contact Beatrice or a product lead to request an agenda topic or an ad hoc slot.

Meeting summary:

Why a new meeting series

• The new Genomic Knowledge Model (GKM) series replaces the separate VRS, VA-Spec and Cat-VRS technical calls.
• Reasons for the change:

• people couldn’t always attend several separate time slots;
• many issues cut across products, for example implementers using Cat-VRS and VA-Spec together;
• each product needs discussion at a different pace.

• Format:

• Two fixed meetings a month, on the 1st and 3rd Thursday at this time.
• Up to two extra ad hoc slots a month, for other time zones or specific topics.
• Parallel Zoom breakout rooms when several topics need discussion at once. The agenda doc shows which topic is in which room.
• Upcoming topics are posted in the “Upcoming Meetings” section of the agenda doc.

• Requesting a topic or an ad hoc slot: contact Beatrice or the relevant product lead.

Goals for the next 6 months: getting to normative

• Alex gave an overview of the TASC product feature maturity model: Draft → Trial Use → Normative → Deprecated.

• Normative means no backwards-incompatible changes, so implementers can adopt at scale with confidence.
• Maturity is recorded per component, both on the documentation site and in the JSON schemas, so it can be checked programmatically. This applies to GKM Core, VRS, VA-Spec and Cat-VRS.

• The products are moving from “early adopters” to “early majority”, and several large-scale implementations are already live.
• Goal: move selected product features to Normative and lower barriers to adoption, ahead of April Connect.
• GKM Starter Kit (introduced at the Singapore Plenary):

• Bundled datasets already include ClinVar (ClinGen) and CIViC. MaveDB is expected soon, and more resources are planned over the next 6 months.
• The kit aims to make producers’ GKM datasets visible and easy to access.
• It also gives consumer implementers a place to share their ingestion experience.

Discussion

What counts as a “product feature”? (raised by Larry)

• Is a feature just a class, or also its attributes? What about attributes that implementations don’t fully use?
• Are methods features too? An example is the VRS normalization algorithm used to generate identifiers. A small change was recently made to it, with implementers’ agreement, because it was still in Trial Use.
• Are tools and reference implementations product features?
• How should implementation be evidenced: verifiable evidence, or implementer attestation (“it’s in my production system”)?
• Larry suggested a lightweight registry or process where implementers can record which features they use and whether those features are ready for Normative.

Alex’s responses:

• Attestation from consumers is key: groups running production systems confirming they have ingested the data and that it meets their use case.
• The Starter Kit bundles show that producers are generating content with the models.
• The GKM product leads will draft a framework for advancing features, bring it to this group for feedback, and refine it through use.

Which kind of documentation readiness? (raised by Melissa)

Melissa distinguished two scenarios:

1. An experienced consumer got the products working after significant effort.
2. A new user can get to production without “a lot of head scratching”.

Alex said both matter. For Normative, the focus is on scenario 2: data, usage guidance and tools that are accessible without hand-holding.

Implementer-driven work (Larry)

• The workstream has moved away from landscape-style analysis. Every piece of work must be tied to a real implementer or a funded or active project.
• Examples:

• MaveDB (Alan Rubin) needed a delivery format.
• ClinGen is delivering ClinVar in GKM format.
• CIViC.
• Epic is consuming GKM data and bringing in partners such as EMBL-EBI to get VEP output in GKM format.

• Attendees are encouraged to ask which project and implementer a discussion serves.
• As adoption grows, the group will need to prioritize. Breakout rooms can help when several implementers have urgent needs.

Lightning Updates (new format)

This is a time-boxed segment of about 1 minute per update. To sign up, add your name and project to the Lightning Updates section of the agenda doc before the meeting.

Cat-VRS (Daniel Puthawala and Brendan Reardon)

• The Oncogenicity and Pathogenicity constraints are open for community review until 16 Nov 2026. Please comment on the PR: https://github.com/ga4gh/cat-vrs/pull/277
• A “mappable measurement concept” proposal is under discussion on GitHub. Input is especially wanted from the GKM leads on whether it belongs in Cat-VRS or GKM Core: https://github.com/ga4gh/cat-vrs/discussions
• All proposals should cite the implementers using or needing the feature.

APAC-friendly GKS Think Tank (Melissa Cline)

• The next session is on 9 Dec 2026, 4:00–5:50 PM Pacific. The announcement will follow in the Think Tank Slack channel and other forums.

ClinVar GKM website (Larry Babb)

• Larry will give a formal update at the next meeting.

Implementer note (from pre-meeting discussion)

• Lee Lichtenstein said All of Us will provide VRS IDs for its variants.
• The development team is also using VRS IDs internally to catch variants that weren’t left-aligned.
• Publication is expected in early Q1 2027.

(AI generated notes!)