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Applications, Cells, and Identity

Application​

An Application is the boundary a developer declares and reasons about. It includes Cell classes, instances, bridges, assets, and deployment configuration.

The boundary carries no runtime guarantee by itself. Cross-Application dependency management is not currently defined.

Cell​

A Cell is a self-contained unit of logic, state, and identity.

It is the smallest thing Myrmic deploys, addresses, and remembers.

Stable logical identity​

An Application can give a Cell a human-readable Stable Resource Name (SRN). Myrmic derives a fixed-size Stable Resource Identifier (SRI) from that name.

Callers use the SRI, not a network address, port, or Node name. Identity and location are separate concepts.

WebAssembly module​

Cell logic is written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly.

OS-based Nodes execute it with Wasmtime. MCU-based Nodes execute modules compiled ahead of time with WAMR. The Node exposes only the functions allowed by the Cell's Capabilities.

Named handlers​

A Cell exposes Command and Event handlers discovered from the module. Timers can wake named handlers later or periodically.

Owned state​

A Cell owns state under its SRI. State is what the Cell remembers between Messages. The current durability contract is defined on the Guarantees page.

Class and instance​

A Cell Class is the deployable definition: the WebAssembly binary, build targets, capability requirements, and initialization contract.

A Cell instance is one running identity created from that class, with its own SRI and state.

Names and identifiers​

The mapping from SRN to SRI is deterministic. This means:

  • the Application chooses the name,
  • the derivation needs no central naming registry,
  • any participant that knows the SRN can compute the same SRI,
  • a Cell can address another Cell it has never previously discovered.

Creation and lifetime​

Any Cell may create another Cell.

An optional lease can make the created Cell's lifetime depend on its creator. This is a strict lifetime relationship, not a supervision or recovery guarantee.

See also​

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