This documentation is now part of the official manual at https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/3.0/files/asset_libraries/index.html

This hackMD book is obsolete.

Manual

The Asset Browser project is about building an Asset Browser, not an Asset Manager. Asset management is a huge topic, and even though they’re both considered some form of "asset management", the functionality needed for an online asset market differs quite a bit from the functionality needed for a production pipeline. It’s not exactly breaking news that production pipelines are a complex topic too. While there is some standard technology nowadays (like Pixar’s USD), there are still big differences from studio to studio. They are just too different in what kind of work they do, how they do it and in turn, what trade-offs in technology they are willing to accept over others.

Blender should help studios get a better pipeline; it should not limit or dictate what to do. Because of this, the asset browser project doesn’t focus on asset management tools, but on the following:

A streamlined, extensible UI for creating, editing, using and sharing asset libraries.

This is the Asset Browser, and this section of the manual describes how it works, and how to use it.