Woxi: An Open-Source Implementation of the Wolfram Language in Rust

Woxi — an open-source implementation of the Wolfram Language, known from the Mathematica system — has been unveiled on Hacker News. The interpreter is written in Rust, and its main distinctive feature is that a single engine powers several interfaces at once.

A Sandbox in the Browser

The centerpiece of the project is an interactive sandbox that runs right in the browser. The authors emphasize that computation happens locally: no data is sent anywhere. The set of examples includes operations familiar to the language: Map, searching for prime numbers, factorization, permutations, factorials, FoldList, Transpose, NestList, and plotting graphics.

Besides the compact sandbox, there is an extended version with an editor and an output panel side by side — it is designed for multi-line expressions and experimenting with graphics.

Command Line, Jupyter, and Studio

Woxi also ships as a console utility. The woxi eval command evaluates expressions, .wls scripts run directly, and the interpreter itself can be used as a shebang. The authors specifically note that startup is faster than with the official wolframscript.

The project integrates with Jupyter: the kernel is installed with the woxi install-kernel command, or full notebook work can be done in the browser through a built-in JupyterLite instance — with no installation required.

Finally, there is Woxi Studio — a native notebook editor for the Wolfram Language's .nb files. It supports cell-by-cell editing, inline graphics, and export to the .ipynb, Markdown, LaTeX, Typst, and PDF formats.

All of the frontends listed above run on the very same interpreter, and this is precisely the core idea of the project: a single Rust-based kernel, available wherever it is most convenient for a given user. The post earned 161 points and 21 comments on Hacker News.

Source: Hacker News