C Binding Specification · Bindings Policy

C Codec Extension Specification

C does not define required codec extension helpers.

The public C binding contract is the installed C API in core/include/zlink.h. Applications that need protobuf, JSON, MessagePack, or another serializer convert their domain objects to bytes before constructing zlink_msg_t, and parse bytes after receiving zlink_msg_t.

The C binding must not add a second public codec layer with helper names such as zlink_parse_json(...) or zlink_to_protobuf_message(...) unless that helper first becomes part of the core public C contract.

This keeps the C surface close to the core API and avoids shallow wrappers that only forward to an application-owned serializer without hiding ownership, validation, or lifetime complexity.