# Contributing to WAI WAI is a specification ([`SPEC.md`](SPEC.md) and its [`extensions/`](extensions/)) with a reference implementation in Rust ([`wai-rs/`](wai-rs/), with [`wai-quantum/`](wai-quantum/) and the browser crate [`wai-web/`](wai-web/)). Both are pre-1.0 drafts: substantive changes are welcome. The canonical repository is the forge at `https://git.transaction.science/Transaction-Science/open-standards`. Send changes there; mirrors of it are read-only. ## To the specification A change is in scope if it: - names a real ambiguity in the text (point at the section and the case that breaks); - adds a missing structural requirement (byte layout, conformance rule, dispatch behaviour) needed to make another implementation falsifiable; - registers a capability with a byte-precise payload format and conformance vectors, not a placeholder (see *Registering a capability*, below). A change is out of scope if it adds optional fields with no testable conformance effect. §8 says what a revision may change: a registered capability's payload format and role are fixed once registered, and a later edition of a standard that changes its bitstream takes a new capability string. ## Registering a capability [`REGISTRY.md`](REGISTRY.md) states the procedure: add the string to the registry table in `wai-rs/src/codecs/`, register it in SPEC §5 under the same heading, run `wai registry export`, and link it from the codec glossary or list it there as having no entry. The tests hold SPEC, the registry and the exported files to the same set of strings. ## To the reference implementation ### Building The default `codecs` feature links system codec libraries (libjxl, libavif, libopus, libdav1d, liblzma, libflac); without them the build stops in a codec crate's build script. Everything else builds without them, and CI builds that way: ```bash cd wai-rs cargo test --lib --no-default-features --features world,audio_scene,haptic,splat4d,score,provenance,neural_int,film cargo run --no-default-features --bin wai -- capabilities ``` Name the features a change touches explicitly; `cargo test` with the defaults is not what CI runs. ### Tests that CI must see - A test file gated on a feature (`#![cfg(feature = "...")]`) compiles to an empty binary, which reports success, in any build without that feature. Declare it in `wai-rs/Cargo.toml` with a `[[test]]` stanza and `required-features`, and add `--test ` with the right `--features` to a step in `.github/workflows/`. A test no workflow names runs nowhere. - A test that reads inputs from outside the tree skips without them. CI sets `WAI_REQUIRE_SOTA_VECTORS=1` where it provides them, and a missing input then fails. - Falsify every new test once: change the code it guards, show it fails, restore the code through git, and show it passes again. ### Vectors Committed conformance vectors and pinned hashes change only through their generator (the `wai_*_vectors gen` binaries and the export tools in [`tools/`](tools/)), never by hand. A test whose comment says its hex must never be edited to make it pass means exactly that. ### Corpus content: where it comes from Corpus content is generated in this repository, by a generator from a seed or a formula, or it is an input whose source and licence are recorded and whose licence permits redistribution. An image, a recording or footage that was not made here and has no such licence is not committed, as content or as training data. Every corpus states its provenance: each `*-conformance/README.md` in a line that begins `**Provenance.**`, and `wai-rs/tests/vectors/README.md` in a row for each vector directory. The line names the generator and its input, and for an input not generated here, its source and licence. A word such as "synthetic" is not a provenance line. `wai-rs/tests/corpus_provenance.rs` requires the line in every corpus, and `tools/wai_audio_provenance_check.py`, which CI runs, fails when a committed audio vector correlates with a reference recording the host has. ### Independent implementations Conformance is defined by the committed corpora (`*-conformance/`) and the criteria of SPEC §7, not by agreement with this implementation's own tests. A second implementation in another language is validated against the same corpora; the OER receipt kernel in C (`oer-conformance/settle/`) is one. ## Public text The specification, the extensions, READMEs, research notes, code comments and the CHANGELOG state what WAI does, plainly: - name no company, vendor, customer or commercial product. Standards, standards bodies, protocols, papers and open-source projects may be named, factually; - make no comparisons with other products or approaches; - give no counts that drift (crate counts, test counts, line counts). Three checks enforce this. `scripts/check-no-vanity-metrics.sh` (opt-out marker `allow-vanity: `) and `scripts/check-comparative-prose.sh` (opt-out `allow-phrase: `, for an identifier or a quotation) run on every change. `scripts/check-public-names.sh` reads its patterns from a private list (the `WAI_NAME_DENYLIST` secret in CI, given only to the run on a push to main, so a pull request is checked when it lands); a functional identifier — a capability string, a model-hub id a tool defaults to, a repository URL, an OS API name, a security advisory id — is kept and its line marked `allow-name: `. Put the marker in a comment of the file's own syntax (``, `// ...`, `# ...`); the reason must contain a letter or a digit. JSON has no comments, so a JSON file carries no such identifier: the codec glossary titles a format by its own name, FourCC, file extension or designation, and never by a company, a product or a person ([`glossary/SCHEMA.md`](glossary/SCHEMA.md)). The checks fail closed: a pattern that does not compile, or any grep error, fails them, and `scripts/test-public-text-checks.sh` proves that on every run. Dated research records are not rewritten: a correction is a dated annotation after the original text, and a name is redacted in place with a dated marker. ## Licence The specification and the reference implementation are Apache-2.0. By contributing, you agree your contribution is licensed under the same terms. Each payload and companion capability carries a licence class (royalty-free, patent-pool, proprietary, non-commercial) for implementing it, recorded in the registry; derivations carry the class `codecs::derivation` gives them; records carry none. Companion implementations outside this tree keep their own licences. No CLA. The licence is the agreement.