Introduction

Baedeker is a WebAssembly runtime implemented in Rust, targeting every platform Rust compiles to — Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, and beyond — as a first-class, embeddable engine.

Named after the Hindmost Baedeker from Larry Niven’s Ringworld / Fleet of Worlds series: cautious, methodical, but ultimately willing to venture into the unknown.

What it does

Baedeker runs WebAssembly modules through a four-stage pipeline:

1. Decode the binary format into a typed module structure.
2. Validate it against the WebAssembly specification.
3. Lower the stack-machine bytecode into a register IR.
4. Execute the register IR on a self-contained interpreter.

The core is no_std + alloc — no filesystem, no threads, no OS — so it embeds cleanly into bare metal, mobile apps, or even another runtime. A complete platform-integration surface (C ABI, Swift package, GPU offload, ahead-of-time compilation) wraps that core for production embedding.

Why it exists

Industrial Algebra builds a broader ecosystem of Rust crates focused on geometric algebra, information geometry, and high-performance functional programming (Amari, Cliffy, Orlando, Minuet). A primary motivation is running that ecosystem on any platform — mobile, desktop, and embedded — without per-platform rewrites. WebAssembly is the portable substrate; Baedeker is the engine that runs it.

Baedeker is a language-runtime and systems project. Its binary decoding, malformed-input handling, validation, and robustness testing exist strictly to improve standards-compliant WebAssembly execution, portability, embedding, and implementation quality.

Key features

• WASM 2.0 core complete — full reference types, fixed-width SIMD, multi-value, bulk memory, multi-module linking, and host functions.
• Spec-verified — the official WebAssembly test suite runs clean: 85 files, 19,204 assertions, 993 modules, 0 failures.
• Differentially tested — generated modules executed against Wasmtime with zero divergences.
• Embeddable — no_std core; C ABI and Swift package for native embedding.
• GPU offload — bulk SIMD work dispatches to GPU compute via Borsalino (Vulkan/Metal), with a layered verification strategy.
• Fuel-bound — interpreter fuel caps execution; categorised traps give precise diagnostics.

Status

Baedeker’s first public release targets WebAssembly 2.0 as a complete, verified milestone. WebAssembly 3.0 proposals (tail calls, exception handling, memory64, GC, threads) are the post-release roadmap. See Roadmap.