WAI is a container + capability-dispatch standard for media. It does not
re-implement codecs; it dispatches to SOTA standard libraries (PNG, FLAC,
zstd as the mandatory floor; AVIF, JPEG-XL, Opus, AV1, XZ as the
recommended modern set) and adds an envelope that lets a neural
shared-prior path coexist with the model-free floor.
The capability a file requires is named, not supplied. Two paths open
every conforming file: the neural condition (sink regenerates from a
shared ambient prior) and the zeroth condition (registered SOTA codec
menu). Apache-2.0.
Adds:
- wai/SPEC.md — WAI v1.0 spec (envelope, manifest, capability dispatch,
registered capabilities including v1.1 multi-rendition extension)
- wai/wai-rs/ — Rust reference implementation: lib + cdylib + staticlib,
C FFI, 11 capability + envelope round-trip tests passing
- wai/wai-web/ — wasm-bindgen wrapper for browser sinks
- wai/wai-neural/ — Python tooling for neural-condition models
- wai/tools/ — codec export + encode helpers (Python)
- wai/corpus/CORPUS.md — third-party test corpus reacquisition guide
Updates README.md to list four standards instead of three.
Known consumer: CommunicationOS uses WAI for media transport over
MoQT/MLS sessions.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <[email protected]>