WebIR & Rosetta whitepaper

Thesis

Frameworks are many writings of the same meaning. The Rosetta rule recovers that meaning without a lossy “regex lift” as the semantic spine. CWL → WebIR via ingest; WebIR → CWL via emit-from-hub tooling. WebIR is the only IR between languages — emit must not bypass it (HUB-TRANSLATION-PATHS.md).

Honesty law: unsupported behavior → hole reason;. Guessing is a forged gene. Silent stubs are cancer.

Package surface

Export	Role
`Module` / `NodeBase`	IR graph root and node base
`Effect` / `ModuleBuilder`	Effects + construction helpers
visit / merge / snapshot	Traversal and provenance helpers
`./dialects/web-request`	HTTP request/response dialect
`./dialects/effect`	Effect dialect
`./dialects/data`	Page/data dialect

Convert: pnpm run link:webir-from-cwl; prove hub:webir-resolve-smoke, hub:cwl-language-pillar-smoke. Pillar: npm run build:webir / link:webir. Reverse authoring: cwl fmt --webir, cwl emit-check.

Surface stack

Authoring (CWL surfaces)
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  CWL API    @route  → JSON handlers      │
│  CWL Pages  @page   → HTML / layouts     │
│  CWL Data   load    → page data sidecar  │
│  CWL UI     @component / islands         │
│  CWL Effects use / effects metadata      │
│  Control    if / foreach (RFC-0021)      │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────┘
                   │ 1:1  (cwl-ingest / emit)
                   ▼
            WebIR (semantic IR)
                   │
       ┌───────────┼───────────┐
       ▼           ▼           ▼
  emit-hono   runtime-cwl   chimera
  emit-fastify              (migration)
                   │
                   ▼
            oracle / verify replay

Ingest / emit / verify lanes

Convert Hub translation paths (WebIR always in the middle):

Lane	Modules (examples)
Ingest	`chrysalis-ingest`, `hub-ast-lift`, `hub-pattern-lift`, `hub-file-lift`, `*-ast-ingest.mjs`, framework peels
Emit	`chrysalis-emit`, `hub-webir-typescript`, `hub-native-`, `emit--from-hub.mjs`, `emit-cwl-from-hub.mjs`
Verify	`legacy-oracle-php`, `hub-structural-gold`, `hub-trace-replay` (`@chrysalis/verify`), `wptp-contract`, `none`

Dispatcher: hub-lift-dispatch.mjs → specialized peels before generic lift-to-webir.mjs. Fat CWL control lowering stays Convert-side (cwl-control-lower.mjs; language grammar stays CWL pillar.

Core vs peel (D6551)

Layer	What lives here
Core	WebIR types; CWL grammar/AST/parse/print/diagnose; hole contracts; verify dispose semantics; provenance
Peel	Origin dialect peels, Hub smokes/proves, COBOL adapters, emit backends, oracle sidecars, CLI orchestration

Peels map into the genome or leave holes. They do not expand the grammar. Promotion to core only when IR/CWL/hole/verify semantics change — not when a prove script grows.

DNA seed from CWL surface

Implemented in cwl-dna-seed.mjs. Draft document: schema: app-dna-v1, mode: draft, bridge.kind: cwl-surface-seed, identity `${host} ${METHOD} ${path_template}`.

Fingerprint	Computation
response keys	Sorted JSON key paths depth ≤ 2; null for non-JSON / SSE
request keys	Union of body + multipart field + file names
query keys	Sorted query binding names (values ignored)
content_class	`html` \| `json` \| `other` from return/surface/stream
status_classes	Hundreds bucket if status present

Envelope annotations (cwl_effects, cwl_surface, stream/multipart) never become certified DNA route fields. CWL holes ≠ DNA holes[]. Golds: 24-dna-bridge, 34-dna-bridge-surfaces.

Deploy profiles (RFC-0023)

External artifact cwl-deploy-profile-v1: app_id, host, hosts{}, path_shape_equality, content_class_from_cwl. Not embedded in CWL grammar. Static asset globs (/**/*.js) are DNA-only collapse.

Hub grades

Path	Signal
cwl → hono / fastify / typescript	Gold when harness + corpus hold
cwl → cwl	Gold (round-trip)
any → cwl	Silver (holes preserved)
verify lane `none`	Silver/open — no trace parity claim

Hub matrix / path knowledge APIs are the source of truth — not marketing greens.

WPTP boundary

WPTP is a public platform orbit: @wptp/ir, OpenAPI/HAR adapters, bronze emitters, compatibility matrix. Hub verify lane wptp-contract can use that orbit. WPTP does not redefine CWL grammar. Prefer platforms/wptp-* over inventing a second DNA in Convert.

Non-goals

Do not fork @chrysalis/webir under Convert.
Do not bypass WebIR in emit.
CWL is not the firewall; WebIR is not a WAF.
CWL does not replace databases, queues, or browser runtimes.

CWL · Convert · Helix

WebIR and the Rosetta path