meta-language

A universal, self-describing meta language backed by a links network, implemented in both Rust and JavaScript with guaranteed feature parity between the two.

Website: https://link-foundation.github.io/meta-language — project description, an interactive WebAssembly demo, and the full Rust API documentation.

Repository layout

No language implementation lives at the repository root. Each language has its own self-contained folder with its own src/, tests/, scripts/, README.md, and badges, and its own CI/CD workflow.

Path	Contents
rust/	Rust crate meta-language — the reference implementation. Built and tested by .github/workflows/rust.yml.
js/	JavaScript package meta-language. Built and tested by .github/workflows/js.yml.
parity/	Cross-language feature manifest. Every feature must be present in both languages (see Feature parity).
docs/	Shared documentation: the grammar subsystem, fidelity matrices, the project website source, and per-issue case studies.
.github/	Shared CI/CD workflows (rust.yml, js.yml).

Declarative, recursive network translation and its template syntax are documented in docs/translation-rules.md. The shared executable query-plan IR plus registry-driven GraphQL and SQL lowering APIs are documented in docs/query-plans.md.

Quick start

Rust

cd rust
cargo test --all-features

use meta_language::{LinkNetwork, ParseConfiguration};

let network = LinkNetwork::parse("alpha beta", "plain-text", ParseConfiguration::default());
assert!(network.verify_full_match(None).is_clean());
assert_eq!(network.reconstruct_text(), "alpha beta");

See rust/README.md for the full API, CLI, grammar subsystem, and website build instructions.

JavaScript

cd js
npm ci
npm test

import { LinkNetwork, ParseConfiguration } from 'meta-language';

const network = LinkNetwork.parse('alpha beta', 'txt', ParseConfiguration.default());
console.log(network.reconstructText()); // alpha beta

See js/README.md for the full JavaScript API.

Arbitrary file formats

Files that do not have a semantic parser can still be stored and transformed without UTF-8 loss. LinkNetwork::parse_bytes in Rust and LinkNetwork.parseBytes in JavaScript represent ordered byte chunks as tokens and retain the caller-supplied media type or format identifier. Calling reconstruct_bytes or reconstructBytes returns the original file exactly.

Feature parity

The core requirement of this project is that every feature present in Rust is also present in JavaScript, and vice versa. This is encoded as data in parity/language-features.json and enforced by js/scripts/check-js-rust-parity.mjs:

• The manifest lists each feature with its Rust and JavaScript implementation status and the evidence files that prove it.
• The checker verifies every evidence file exists and that the JavaScript API operation registry covers every operation family and API style.
• Both rust.yml and js.yml run the parity gate, so changing one language without mirroring the change in the other fails CI in both workflows.

Run the gate locally from either language folder:

node js/scripts/check-js-rust-parity.mjs            # full check
node js/scripts/check-js-rust-parity.mjs --manifest-only

Case study

The analysis, requirements breakdown, and solution plan for the multi-language restructuring live in docs/case-studies/issue-163.

License

Released into the public domain under the Unlicense.