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The retrofit's commit says the research notes, extensions and source comments make no comparisons. These lines still ranked or promoted: - research/cargo-roadmap.md: the sequencing rationale and the phase reasons now say what each phase reuses or carries, and the status note points to content-taxonomy.md for each class's status. - research/content-taxonomy.md: the "white space" table is now the cargo-roadmap phase table, with each phase marked shipped and its capability named, so it no longer contradicts the taxonomy rows above it; the closing clause of the spatial-audio row and "That's the whole map" are removed. - extensions/spatial-audio.md and research/spatial-audio-draft.md: the appendix says why spatial audio was first without ranking it. - SPEC.md §5, extensions/ternary-tt.md and the CAP_TERNARY_TT comment: wai.ternary.tt is stated by its own measured operating point (13.3 dB SNR at 3.8x with six residual layers, the extension's table) and its Lossy tier. - research/2030-transport-landscape.md: three lines restated as what WAI specifies; the CHANGELOG entry now says comparative framing in dated records is restated in place, as names are redacted. - wai-rs/src/lib.rs: the quantum_qec comment ends at the metric it carries. scripts/check-comparative-prose.sh gains five phrases (commercial wedge, unclaimed, fast win, differentiator, rate-competitive), each with a case in scripts/test-public-text-checks.sh. REGISTRY.md and vocab/README.md say that the v2 SHACL shape checks the capability and fallback against this revision's registry and only the form of media, and that a violation for an unregistered string means it is not registered in this revision, not that the envelope fails to conform or cannot be dispatched (SPEC §4, §8). The CHANGELOG's candidate-capability bullet states the MINOR rule as a full sentence. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <[email protected]>
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WAI Content Taxonomy — the bearings doc
Living reference for what web-transported content benefits from WAI, how, and which extension covers it. Not normative; it's the map we plan cargo classes against. Edit as classes ship.
1. The reframe: a spectrum, not a list of media types
Everything transported over the web sits on one axis:
captured reality ──► synthesizable ──► executable ──► symbolic
(samples) (rendered from (it IS a (already
a description) program) instructions)
WAI's leverage is proportional to how much of the content the sink can reconstruct instead of receiving pre-rendered. The discipline it enforces: do not claim "everything becomes instructions" — a real photograph is irreducibly samples. Different position on the axis → a different lever, and a different gain.
2. The four levers
| # | Lever | What it does | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Codec dispatch | name a registered codec; the sink decodes it or falls back | all media |
| 2 | Neural shared-prior | ship conditioning, regenerate against a requirement-of-existence model | perceptual media a model can reconstruct |
| 3 | Instructions-at-the-sink | ship the recipe / state / intent; the sink renders | anything whose payload is secretly a rendered result |
| 4 | Determinism + receipts | replay/decode/mixdown-equivalence, content-addressing, JWP signatures, joules | cross-cutting — applies even to content that can't be reconstructed |
Levers 1–2 are the compression story. Lever 3 is the medium-shift story: the unit of value moves from bytes delivered to energy per experience. Lever 4 is the trust-and-energy story, and it rides on top of all of them.
3. The taxonomy (with mechanism + coverage)
Status: ✅ shipped · 🟡 partial/composable from shipped pieces · ⬜ white space.
A. Captured reality — irreducible samples (levers 1, 2, 4)
| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Photographs / images | codec dispatch + neural | wai.image.* (PNG/JXL/AVIF/JPEG, neural family) |
✅ |
| Recorded audio | codec dispatch + neural | wai.audio.{flac,opus}, wai.neural.{dac,encodec32,…} |
✅ |
| Recorded / cinematographic video | codec dispatch + neural | wai.video.av1*, wai.neural.{dcvc_rt,dcvc_fm} |
✅ |
| Live capture: conferencing, telephony, radio, broadcast | codec dispatch + receipts | core audio/video caps + JWP per object | 🟡 (transport out of scope; caps + receipts exist) |
| Sensor / telemetry / IoT | content-addressing + receipts | wai.text.zstd + JWP (or a wai.feed.* class) |
🟡 |
| Scientific captures: microscopy, medical imaging, LiDAR/point clouds, genomic | codec dispatch + content-addressing | core caps; point clouds → splat/volumetric path | 🟡 |
| Biosignals (EEG/ECG) | content-addressing + receipts | wai.text.zstd + JWP |
🟡 |
B. Synthesizable media — shipped today as the render (lever 3)
| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animation / CGI film | instructions-at-sink | wai.film.linear (a sealed world + camera track + frame schedule, film-equivalence) |
✅ |
| Motion graphics / titles / ads | instructions-at-sink | interactive-worlds / joule-ui | 🟡 |
| Music as score / synthesis | instructions-at-sink | wai.audio.score (note events, deterministic synth, mixdown-equivalence) |
✅ |
| Procedural / game audio, soundscapes | instructions-at-sink | spatial-audio (wai.audio.scene) |
🟡 Phase 1 |
| Text-to-speech | neural prior | ship text + a voice prior (wai.neural.* speech) |
🟡 |
| Data visualizations / charts | instructions-at-sink | ship data + spec (joule-ui) | 🟡 |
| Diagrams, vector art, fonts | instructions-at-sink | formats the web already carries as instructions; envelope only | ✅ (precedent) |
| Maps / geospatial | instructions-at-sink | map standard |
✅ (sibling) |
C. Interactive / executable — it IS a program (levers 3, 4)
| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Videogames / interactive worlds | instructions + determinism + receipts | interactive-worlds (wai.world.*) |
✅ |
| 3D scenes / models | content-addressed assets | wai.mesh.glb |
✅ |
| Gaussian splats | content-addressed assets | wai.splat.spz |
✅ |
| AR / VR / XR immersive scenes | instructions-at-sink | interactive-worlds + a sink pose/camera mode | 🟡 (substrate exists; XR sink mode unbuilt) |
| Volumetric / light-field / holographic / 6DoF video | instructions-at-sink | wai.splat.4d (temporal Gaussian tracks, frame-state-equivalence) |
✅ |
| Avatars / digital humans | instructions-at-sink | wai.avatar.pose (skeletal sim + animation ops, skins a wai.mesh.glb) |
✅ |
| UIs / applications | instructions-at-sink + receipts | joule-ui standard |
✅ (sibling) |
| Documents-as-programs (interactive/reactive) | instructions-at-sink | joule-ui / interactive-worlds | 🟡 |
| Simulations / digital twins | instructions + determinism | interactive-worlds sim registrants; CAD/mathground lineage | 🟡 |
D. Structured / symbolic — already instructions (levers 1, 4)
| Content | Primary lever | Capability / extension | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Text / markup / documents | codec + content-addressing | wai.text.{zstd,xz}; reading surface = Access/Lumina |
✅ |
| Code / software / packages | content-addressing + receipts | wai.text.zstd + JWP |
🟡 |
| Datasets / tabular / scientific data / knowledge graphs | content-addressing + receipts | wai.text.* + JWP; JouleDB lineage |
🟡 |
| Notifications / messages / event-&-state feeds | instructions + receipts | wai.feed.state (broadcast profile, replay-equivalence) |
✅ |
The cargo-roadmap phases
Five classes were built as phases of cargo-roadmap.md; each has shipped.
| Content | What it shares with the thesis | Phase and status |
|---|---|---|
| Object-based / spatial audio | the audio form of the video thesis: ship sound objects + a scene, render to the listener's speaker config; mixdown-equivalence is the audio counterpart of replay-equivalence | Phase 1, shipped (wai.audio.scene) |
| Haptics | instruction streams to actuators; tiny payloads, pure recipe, deterministic | Phase 2, shipped (wai.haptic.signal) |
| Live state-feeds | sports/events as state, not pixels — the multiplayer-games precedent applied to broadcast | Phase 3, shipped (wai.feed.state, the broadcast profile of wai.world.live) |
| Digital humans / avatars | a high-bandwidth capture that reduces to a rig plus a pose stream | Phase 4, shipped (wai.avatar.pose) |
| Volumetric / light fields | the splat path extended in time; frame-state-equivalence | Phase 5, shipped (wai.splat.4d) |
| Full-sensory / olfactory | the far end of the axis | on the axis; not scheduled |
4. The one sentence to navigate by
WAI carries whatever it can reconstruct, and verifies whatever it carries. Reconstruction (instructions-at-sink, neural priors) is the compression story; verification (determinism, content-addressing, receipts, joules) is the trust-and-energy story — and the second applies even to the content that can't be reconstructed.
5. Reading the map
- Lever 3 applies most directly to animation film (a sealed camera-on-rails world) and to live state-feeds.
- Object-based spatial audio carries the same equivalence rule to audio: mixdown-equivalence is the audio counterpart of replay-equivalence.
- Lever 4 needs no reconstruction at all: content-addressing, JWP receipts and measured joules apply to every class, including raw captured reality.
See cargo-roadmap.md for the phased build plan.