Crate Layout

brink is organized as a Cargo workspace with strict dependency rules. The central design principle is the firewall: brink-format is the only crate shared between the compiler and runtime.

Published crates

Crate	Path	Purpose
`brink-compiler`	`crates/brink-compiler/`	Pipeline driver: `.ink` to `StoryData`
`brink-runtime`	`crates/brink-runtime/`	Bytecode VM for executing compiled stories
`brink-cli`	`crates/brink-cli/`	CLI tool: compile, convert, play, replay, ide, export-xliff, compile-locale, regenerate-xliff, fmt
`brink-lsp`	`crates/brink-lsp/`	Language server for ink files
`brink-web`	`crates/brink-web/`	WASM bindings for the IDE + runtime; powers the web playground
`bevy-brink`	`crates/bevy-brink/`	Bevy 0.19 integration: plugin, assets, components, external-function bindings

Internal crates

Crate	Path	Purpose
`brink-syntax`	`crates/internal/brink-syntax/`	Lexer, parser, lossless CST, typed AST
`brink-ir`	`crates/internal/brink-ir/`	HIR + LIR intermediate representations, lowering
`brink-analyzer`	`crates/internal/brink-analyzer/`	Cross-file semantic analysis, symbol resolution
`brink-driver`	`crates/internal/brink-driver/`	Pipeline orchestration: file discovery + cross-file analysis
`brink-codegen-inkb`	`crates/internal/brink-codegen-inkb/`	Bytecode codegen: LIR to `StoryData`
`brink-format`	`crates/internal/brink-format/`	Binary interface between compiler and runtime
`brink-db`	`crates/internal/brink-db/`	Incremental project database, file discovery
`brink-source-tree`	`crates/internal/brink-source-tree/`	`SourceTree` trait: host-agnostic seam for enumerating/reading `.brink` source files
`brink-fmt`	`crates/internal/brink-fmt/`	`.ink` source formatter (powers `brink fmt`)
`brink-intl`	`crates/internal/brink-intl/`	Internationalization tooling: line export, XLIFF round-trip, `.inkl` compile, ICU plurals
`xliff2`	`crates/internal/xliff2/`	General-purpose XLIFF 2.0 read/write library
`brink-ide`	`crates/internal/brink-ide/`	Protocol-agnostic IDE query library (shared by the LSP/web)
`bevy-brink-derive`	`crates/internal/bevy-brink-derive/`	Derive macros for `bevy-brink` (`#[derive(BrinkCommand)]`)
`brink-test-harness`	`crates/internal/brink-test-harness/`	Episode-based behavioral testing (oracle corpus)

Internal crates have publish = false and are not published to crates.io.

crates/brink/ is an empty umbrella crate — it holds the brink name on crates.io and ships no code. There is no facade re-exporting the compiler and runtime; depend on brink-compiler and brink-runtime directly.

Editor support

Editor integration ships as the brink-lsp server (above), not as per-editor plugin crates. A Zed extension crate lived at crates/zed-brink/ until 2026-08-01; it was ink-only, unpublished, and its tree-sitter grammar pointed at an absolute local path that never existed in the repo, so it could not be built. It was removed rather than carried. A future editor plugin should target the native (.brink) surface — see the NS-T track.

Key dependency rules

brink-runtime depends ONLY on brink-format — keeps the runtime minimal and embeddable
brink-lsp depends on brink-analyzer, NOT on brink-compiler — the LSP needs parse through validation, not codegen
brink-format has no brink-internal dependencies — it is the stable interface layer
brink-format is the firewall — source-level concepts never leak into the runtime

These rules enable hot-reload (runtime loads new bytecode without the compiler), compile-time isolation (changing compiler internals doesn’t rebuild the runtime), and small runtime binaries for embedding.

Workspace conventions

Dependencies are declared in [workspace.dependencies] in the root Cargo.toml and referenced via dep.workspace = true in each crate
Lints are configured in [workspace.lints] and inherited via [lints] workspace = true
Edition, license, repository are set in [workspace.package] and inherited with field.workspace = true