Architecture overview

See also: Integration (how projects work together), Projects (individual project details)

How rhi projects are structured and how they relate.

Project landscape

Normalize architecture

Structural code intelligence with three primitives:

Key components:

• Grammar Loader: Dynamic .so loading for 98 tree-sitter grammars
• Skeleton Extractor: AST → structured output (signatures, dependencies, calls)
• File Index: SQLite symbol/call graph with background daemon
• Shadow Git: Hunk-level edit tracking in .normalize/.git

habitat Architecture

Persistent multiplayer world runtime:

Key components:

• Entity System: Flexible props JSON store for infinite extensibility
• Lua Runtime: Sandboxed scripting for object behaviors
• Capability System: Fine-grained permissions per entity
• JSON-RPC: Headless core, any frontend can connect

Unshape architecture

Constructive media generation with lazy evaluation:

Key components:

• Node Graph: Type-safe connections with topological execution
• Field Trait: Lazy evaluation for continuous domains
• Expression System: AST with optional JIT compilation
• Domain Crates: Independent crates per media type

Shared patterns

All projects follow common architectural patterns:

Plugin architecture

Core defines contracts; plugins provide implementations. Built-in features use the same interface as third-party extensions.

Lazy evaluation

Build descriptions, evaluate on demand. Defer computation until needed.

Graceful degradation

Handle messy real-world data. Fall back gracefully when parsing fails.