HighLevelGoals

WASI High Level Goals

(In the spirit of WebAssembly's High-Level Goals.)

1. Define a set of portable, modular, runtime-independent, and WebAssembly-native APIs which can be used by WebAssembly code to interact with the outside world. These APIs preserve the essential sandboxed nature of WebAssembly through a Capability-based API design.
2. Specify and implement incrementally. Start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), then adding additional features, prioritized by feedback and experience.
3. Supplement API designs with documentation and tests, and, when feasible, reference implementations which can be shared between wasm engines.
4. Make a great platform:
   • Work with WebAssembly tool and library authors to help them provide WASI support for their users.
   • When being WebAssembly-native means the platform isn't directly compatible with existing applications written for other platforms, design to enable compatibility to be provided by tools and libraries.
   • Allow the overall API to evolve over time; to make changes to API modules that have been standardized, build implementations of them using libraries on top of new API modules to provide compatibility.