AURA — Adaptive Universal Record Architecture

AURA is a polymorphic, semantically-aware, and cryptographically sealed master media format. Unlike delivery formats (JPEG, MP4, AVIF) designed for efficient pixel delivery, AURA is the canonical source of truth for digital reality capture. It natively stores:

• 2D / 3D spatial data via a hierarchical, typed Record container.
• A Semantic DAG of concept nodes, edges, and per-concept pixel bitmasks.
• A C2PA-style provenance ledger baked into the file (genesis hash + append-only, signed edit history).
• A WASM bootstrap in the header that self-describes the decoding math, so the file remains readable even if the standard disappears.
• Adaptive neural encoding (Tier 0 base layer + Tier 1 neural payload) for compute-scalable fidelity.

AURA is explicitly not for edge delivery. It is the master format from which all delivery formats are compiled (web, VR/USD, print/TIFF, legal/JPEG).

This is an open-source reference implementation of the RFC 001 AURA specification (also available as plain text in spec.txt).

Workspace layout

Crate	Description
tpt-aura	Core library: container, provenance, bootstrap, semantic DAG, neural encoding.
tpt-aura-cli	Command-line tool (aura create/inspect/verify/sign/compile).
tpt-aura-onnx	Optional ONNX inference (YOLOv8 / SAM / CLIP) for populating the Semantic DAG.

Building

cargo build --workspace

The tpt-aura-onnx crate's real ONNX backend is gated behind the onnx feature (requires network access at build time to fetch ONNX Runtime). By default a pure-Rust stub detector is used so the workspace builds and tests offline.

cargo build --workspace --features tpt-aura-onnx/onnx

Quick start

The CLI binary is named aura (the crate is tpt-aura-cli). Build it with cargo build --workspace; the binary lands at target/debug/aura.

5-minute quickstart

# Build the CLI
cargo build --workspace

# Create an AURA file from an image (a device key is generated automatically)
./target/debug/aura create photo.png -o photo.aura

# Pretty-print every section
./target/debug/aura inspect photo.aura

# Verify the cryptographic trust chain
./target/debug/aura verify photo.aura

# Sign the ledger with the device key produced during `create`
./target/debug/aura sign photo.aura --key photo.aura.key -o signed.aura

# Compile to a delivery target (Tier-0 base layer; PNG is the web default)
./target/debug/aura compile signed.aura --target web -o photo.png

Available commands

Command	Description
aura create <input> -o <output.aura>	Build an AURA file (Tier-0 base + optional Semantic DAG via --detect).
aura inspect <file.aura>	Pretty-print every section.
aura verify <file.aura>	Verify the cryptographic trust chain.
aura sign <file.aura> --key <key>	Append a signed ledger entry.
`aura compile <file.aura> --target <web	vr

Note on --target web: the reference compiler emits the Tier-0 base layer as a standard PNG/JPEG (format inferred from the output extension). AVIF/WebP delivery is planned; see the RFC 001 "Compiler" model in docs/SPEC.md.

Testing

cargo test --workspace
cargo clippy --workspace -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --check

License

Licensed under either of Apache License, Version 2.0 or MIT license at your option.

Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in the work by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall be dual licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.