The wasmCloud Host Runtime is a server process that securely hosts and provides dispatch for actors and capability providers. This runtime is designed to take advantage of WebAssembly's small footprint, secure sandbox, speed, and portability to allow developers to write boilerplate-free code that embraces the actor model and abstracts away dependencies on non-functional requirements via well-defined interfaces.

This host runtime is written in Elixir and extensively leverages the decades of work, testing, and improvements that have gone into the OTP framework. There are a number of excellent Elixir and OTP references online, but we highly recommend starting with the Pragmatic Programmers Elixir and OTP library of books.

To get started with installation and exploration, check out the getting started section of our documentation.

The wasmCloud Host Runtime is made up of two pieces:

• The Host Core
• Dashboard Web UI

The host core consists of all of the "headless" (no UI) functional components of the system. This OTP application and its contained supervision tree represent the core of the wasmCloud OTP host runtime.

You can find the host core in this github repository.

The dashboard web UI (often colloquially referred to as the washboard) is a Phoenix application that fits snugly atop the host core, providing real-time web access to a variety of information, telemetry, and insight while also exposing a graphical interface to controlling the host and portions of the lattice.

You can find the dashboard UI in this github repository.

All of wasmCloud's lattice functionality requires the use of NATS. To learn more, check out the lattice section of our documentation.