Crate thread_manifest 

World Manifest — the document format of the Thread

The Thread is the open, spatial, present, time-aware successor to the web: worlds are pearls strung along one Thread, linked by portals (veils you step through). This crate defines the World Manifest — the “HTML” of the Thread: an open, renderer-agnostic description of a place that any browser (Infinite is the first) can resolve and render.

Design principles (mirroring why the web won):

• Narrow waist. Every browser implements this format or nothing interops.
• Renderer-agnostic. Geometry is glTF + prefab refs + a standard material model — never a specific engine’s internals.
• Static-first, presence-optional. A world is just files (host it anywhere). Presence (shared, multi-user) is an upgrade you opt into by naming a relay; without one, the world gracefully degrades to solo.
• Meaning is native. Anything can link to a canonical [Codex] entry.
• Time is an axis. A world declares a year; the same place is addressable across time.

See world-manifest-v0.1 for the normative specification — that document is the standard, and this crate is one implementation of it.

Modules

arch

arch — the shared architecture math of the Thread

lint

World lint — the quality eye that runs before any screenshot

markup

Thread markup — the HTML/CSS authoring surface for worlds.

model

Model — the agent-native 3D format of the Thread

plan

Plan — a level design, before it knows what it is made of

shape

Shape — procedural geometry as manifest data

texture

Texture — procedural PBR materials as manifest data

Structs

Animate

Declarative idle motion for a placement. Kinds (v0.1): "spin" (rotate about the object’s own Y axis), "bob" (rise and fall around the base position), and "path" (travel a looping polyline of points, offsets from the placement’s position — a patrol, a tour, a journey retraced). speed scales time (metres/second for path); amp is metres of travel for bob. Browsers phase-shift instances so fields of movers don’t march in lockstep.

Asset

External content referenced by id.

Behavior

A sandboxed WASM behavior module the world runs.

Bounds

Axis-aligned world bounds (advisory).

Environment

Environmental setup: time, sky, bounds, and the game mechanics this place enforces.

Identity

A portable, provider-agnostic identity (the open form of the Passport).

Interaction

A declarative, codeless interaction a creator attaches to a placed object.

LightEmitter

A point light emitted from a placement’s position. Declarative, like everything else in a manifest: worlds say what glows; the browser’s deferred lighting pass decides how the glow falls on surfaces.

Locator

A parsed Locator. Round-trips through Locator::parse / [Locator::to_string].

MaterialRef

Standard PBR material (renderer-agnostic). Texture fields are Asset ids.

MeshRef

How a prefab’s geometry is sourced. Exactly one field should be set.

Placement

One placed instance of a prefab.

Portal

A veil to another world — the hyperlink of the Thread.

Prefab

A unique renderable prefab (mesh + optional material), keyed by StructuredId.

Presence

Presence policy — the (optional) upgrade from a solo world to a shared one.

Sky

A simple gradient sky (zenith→horizon) with an optional sun direction.

Spawn

An arrival point.

StructuredId

The prefab/item id scheme, re-exported so consumers of the manifest don’t need a direct thread-id dependency. A structured decimal ID encoding category, subcategory, and item number.

StyleRule

A CSS-like style rule: a selector + the properties it attaches to matching placements. Lets a world define behaviour by type / .class / #id once, instead of inline on every placement — restyle everything from one rule.

TextLink

One hyperlink in a TextPanel: text is the phrase inside the panel’s content it anchors to (first occurrence); to is any Locator.

TextPanel

Readable text a browser typesets onto a placement’s surface (a quad prefab is the natural carrier). The browser owns fonts and layout — the world ships only the words, exactly like the old web shipping text and letting the browser render it.

WorldManifest

A World Manifest — one place on the Thread.

WorldMeta

Identity + descriptive metadata for the world.

WorldRules

Opt-in game mechanics a world enforces. Default all off — the browser ships these as capabilities; a place turns on only what it needs (like a page opting into pointer lock). Interact/inspect are always available and are NOT gated here — only the game-y mechanics are.

Enums

AssetKind

What an Asset is.

InteractionEffect

One outcome of a completed Interaction. Deliberately small + declarative; serialized snake_case (unit variants as bare strings) so manifests read clean.

ManifestError

An error parsing or validating a manifest.

PreviewPolicy

Portal preview fidelity.

Constants

SCHEME

The URL scheme of the Thread.

THREAD_VERSION

The format version tag carried in every manifest’s thread field.

Functions

effective_mode_of

Presence::effective_mode for callers holding raw JSON.

well_known_url

The canonical .well-known manifest URL for a host + world path — https://<host>/.well-known/thread[/<path>]/world.json. This is the decentralized, zero-registry convention: serve a world here and any browser can reach it at thread://<host>[/<path>]. Single source of truth shared by the browser resolver and the thread CLI.

Type Aliases

Extra

Fields this build doesn’t know about, carried through untouched.