An apparatus, system, and method for managing and formatting data in an autonomous data transfer operation are provided. An initialization module is configured to prepare metadata corresponding to a data source. A loader loads autonomous operation instructions corresponding to the data source into a first location and loads autonomous operation instructions corresponding to the metadata into a second location. An assembler selectively assembles, according to a set of formatting rules, autonomous operation instructions from the first location and the second location into a set of autonomous operation instructions. By assembling an ordered set of autonomous operation instructions, a third party autonomous operation may effectively insert metadata into and remove metadata from a contiguous data stream of a data source without altering the data.