open-standards/wai/extensions/avatars.md

# WAI Extension: Avatars (Digital Humans)

> Status: Draft. Phase 4 of the cargo roadmap. Motion as instructions:
> ship a signed stream of joint transforms — a skeleton, not a video of a
> body — and the sink skins a mesh by the deterministic pose. An avatar
> is a skeletal world, so conformance is **pose-equivalence**, a special
> case of replay-equivalence. Reference impl: the `world` feature of
> `wai-rs` (sim `wai.world.sim.skeletal0`); corpus: `avatar-conformance/`;
> live sink: wai.transaction.science/avatar.
Keywords **MUST**, **MUST NOT**, **SHOULD**, **MAY** are RFC 2119/8174.

## 1. Scope and model

A `wai.avatar.pose` object is a **skeletal world**: the same `WWLD`
container, op log, canonical ordering, causality, sealing, state hash,
and receipt chain as interactive-worlds (see `interactive-worlds.md`),
with the simulation step reduced to the **identity** (as with
state-feeds). The bones are nodes; an animation / expression op stream
sets joint transforms; nothing is integrated. A telepresence stream is a
live world of one avatar — the op log that drives a multiplayer world
drives a body.

In scope: the bone model, the registered skeletal sim
(`wai.world.sim.skeletal0`) and its mutation kinds, the statement that
conformance is worlds' replay-equivalence over the pose, and the
binding to a `wai.mesh.glb` for skinning.

Out of scope: everything interactive-worlds already defines (normative
here unchanged); the skinning algorithm and forward-kinematics
composition (sink presentation — a pure function of the hashed pose +
the hierarchy); a transport; blend-shape / morph-target semantics beyond
joint transforms (a later registration may add them).

Relationship to the core spec: a registration under interactive-worlds,
not a new container. `media` takes the value `"avatar"`; the
authoritative capability is `wai.avatar.pose`, carried in a `WWLD` whose
contract names `sim = wai.world.sim.skeletal0`. The avatar's mesh is a
content-addressed `wai.mesh.glb` asset (its armature + skin weights),
bound to the rig like any other presentation asset.

## 2. The bone

A node is a **bone**: a parent reference plus a local TRS transform.
Canonical field order (and therefore hash order) is exactly:

| field | type | meaning |
|---|---|---|
| `parent` | `[u8; 16]` | parent bone's node id, or all-zero for a root |
| `translation` | `[Fx; 3]` | local translation (Q32.32) |
| `rotation` | `[Fx; 4]` | local rotation quaternion `(x, y, z, w)` |
| `scale` | `[Fx; 3]` | local scale |

The canonical node serialization is `parent(16) | translation | rotation
| scale` = 16 + 10×`i64` = 96 bytes. The default bone is the identity
(zero translation, identity quaternion, unit scale).

The floor stays **trig-free**: a rotation is carried as a quaternion, and
the quaternion → rotation-matrix the sink uses for skinning is `+ − ×`
only. Axis-angle authoring (which needs sin/cos) happens once, off-line,
in whatever produces the op bytes — the canonical artifact is the `Fx`
quaternion, and every sink replays it exactly.

## 3. The skeletal sim — `wai.world.sim.skeletal0`

Registers these mutation kinds; the `step` is the identity. All are LWW
(a transform set rides the canonical total order — last canonical writer
wins; there is no commutative transform set, so no SUM kind).

| kind | payload | effect |
|---|---|---|
| `0x0001` CREATE | `parent[16] \| translation[3] \| rotation[4] \| scale[3]` | insert a bone; target MUST equal `mint_node_id(actor, lamport)` |
| `0x0002` DELETE | *(empty)* | remove the bone |
| `0x0010` SET_ROTATION | `rotation[4]` | set a joint's local rotation (the animation driver) |
| `0x0011` SET_TRANSLATION | `translation[3]` | set a bone's local translation |
| `0x0012` SET_SCALE | `scale[3]` | set a bone's local scale |

An op targeting an absent bone is a **deterministic no-op**
(interactive-worlds §6.4). `parent` need not name a present bone — a
missing parent is treated as a root at FK time; the *hash* depends only
on the stored values, so existence is irrelevant to conformance.

## 4. Conformance — pose-equivalence

> Given the same avatar container and the same signed op set, a
> conforming sink MUST compute the identical BLAKE3 **state hash** at
> every checkpoint — the per-bone local transforms, in node-id order — on
> every machine, no tolerance parameter.

This is interactive-worlds' criterion verbatim, applied to the bone
state. The forward-kinematics composition into world space and the
skinning of the mesh produce identical results on any two sinks that
agree on the pose (a pure function of the hashed locals + the hierarchy),
so they are legitimately left to presentation and excluded from the hash
— exactly as `wai.mesh.glb` geometry is.

## 5. Receipt (JWP profile)

The interactive-worlds session receipt (`jwp-receipts.md`) applies
unchanged: world identity over contract + tick-0 graph; the group's
objects are the op batches, Merkle-bound; one Ed25519 seal over world
hash + root + checkpoints + exact signed `work` + carried `joules_micro`
(with its acquisition class as an optional signed label,
[energy-measurement](energy-measurement.md) §2.8);
`parent_receipt_hash` chains a performance's seals into a timeline.

## Appendix

An avatar is the highest-bandwidth capture reduced to its instructions:
a body in motion is a rig plus a stream of joint angles, and the standard
carries the rig and the angles, not the pixels. Pose-equivalence makes
the *motion* auditable — two parties to a call hold the same signed
skeleton — while the *appearance* stays the sink's, skinned from a shared
mesh. Sight (worlds), sound (mixdown), touch (sample), live state (feed),
and now a moving body (pose) are one floor, one verification.