Pre-alpha: PHOXAL is being rewritten in public. APIs, catalogs, generated bundles, and runtime contracts may break loudly while the architecture converges. That is intentional: incoherent robot graphs should fail visibly, not drift silently.
PHOXAL is a Rust-first, manifest-driven robotics framework for teams that want the same model to drive validation, Webots simulation, deployment, and real robot execution.
It is not a ROS clone. The framework is built around authored robot and component contracts, typed Zenoh communication, isolated runtime and driver processes, logical simulation time, generated artifact catalogs, and operator-facing observability.
The first operational target is sidewalk and street-maintenance autonomy. The framework is general enough for mobile robots, but its design is forced by a real deployment goal: robots that can be modeled, simulated, observed, deployed, and fixed without hidden state.
| Principle | What it means |
|---|---|
| Manifests are authoritative | robot.yaml, structure.urdf, and component manifests describe the robot. Runtime state is not discovered implicitly. |
| Contracts are typed | Topics, queries, and commands are Rust contracts carried over Zenoh, not ad-hoc payloads on string channels. |
| Simulation is first-class | Webots simulation uses the same framework-owned contracts and a logical-time execution model. |
| Processes are isolated | Platform services, hardware drivers, user services, tools, and simulators are separate participants joined by the bus. |
| Breaks are loud | Pre-alpha API and catalog changes should fail clearly during resolution, validation, or decode, not degrade silently. |
| You want to … | Go here |
|---|---|
| Read the framework code | phoxal/framework — core crates plus official service, component, tool, and simulator binaries |
| Use the consumer CLI | phoxal/phoxal-cli — validates manifests, resolves artifacts, runs simulation, and orchestrates local execution |
| Inspect operator tooling | phoxal/operator — host-side observability, currently centered on the Rerun proxy |
| Try the public robot sandbox | phoxal/robot-rover — open rover manifest; migration to the current robot/v0 grammar is still pending |
| Understand org policy and CI | phoxal/.github — this profile, community-health files, and reusable Rust CI/release workflows |
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ phoxal-cli │
│ check · validate · simulate · run · deploy · doctor · catalog │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ phoxal/framework │
│ │
│ phoxal authoring/runtime/model utilities │
│ phoxal-api generation-qualified contracts: phoxal_api::y2026_1 │
│ phoxal-bus typed Zenoh ABI floor │
│ phoxal-macros service/driver/tool/simulator authoring macros │
│ │
│ service/<name> · component/<name> · tool/<name> · simulator/<name> │
│ official platform binaries, component packages, joypad, Webots │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
▲ │
│ ▼
┌───────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Robot projects │ │ phoxal/operator │
│ robot.yaml │ │ host-side observability │
│ structure.urdf │ │ telemetry · logs · Rerun surfaces │
│ services/ │ └──────────────────────────────────────┘
│ worlds/ │
└───────────────────────┘
PHOXAL is pre-alpha and pre-1.0. The public story is stable enough to present; the implementation is intentionally still moving.
Contracts live in generation-qualified modules such as phoxal_api::y2026_1::<domain>. Breaking changes should mint a new generation or catalog entry instead of quietly mutating an existing contract. Expect breakage while the framework converges.
- License: AGPL-3.0-only across public repos, with a commercial path for downstream products that cannot accept AGPL source-disclosure obligations.
- Contributing: DCO sign-off on every commit; Conventional Commits for messages.
- Release model: The framework publishes coherent artifact catalogs so the CLI can resolve a robot graph explicitly before launch.
- Architecture stance: No ROS-compat shim, no hidden runtime descriptor protocol, no freeform runtime graph as the default.
- 🌐 phoxal.com
- 💬 Issues + discussions on each individual repo
© PHOXAL · Built in the open.