x-ms-identifiers
`x-ms-identifiers` appears on schema objects and properties. It is used as a marker with no value. Used by a single provider across 240 OpenAPI documents. It sits in the `x-ms-` namespace, so its meaning is defined by ms tooling rather than by OpenAPI. Consistent with identity & relationships — this is inferred from where the key appears and what it carries, not from any published definition.
Where it appears
| Location in the document | Occurrences | |
|---|---|---|
| schema | 2300 | |
| components | 7 | |
| parameter | 23 | |
| response | 19 | |
| path | 3 | |
| header | 6 | |
| tag | 3 | |
| info | 1 |
What its value looks like
| Value shape | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| array | 731 |
| empty | 1631 |
Providers publishing it
All 1.
Why this is not in OpenAPI
Extensions exist because a provider needed something the specification would not carry. Most of what they hold is not the API contract at all — it is operational metadata about the contract: documentation, lifecycle, policy, provenance, and now agents. That metadata is usually better placed alongside the contract, in an Overlay or an APIs.json index, than crammed inside it. See everything else doing the data & schema semantics job.