Spanda

Community Packages

Spanda’s package ecosystem supports community-contributed frameworks, drivers, adapters, and libraries for robotics, AI, simulation, and safety.

Package categories

Every package can declare one or more categories:

Category	Examples
`ai`	LLM providers, inference runtimes
`robotics`	Control, planning, fleet coordination
`vision`	OpenCV, YOLO, depth cameras
`navigation`	SLAM, path planning, localization
`manipulation`	Grasping, arm control
`simulation`	Gazebo, Webots backends
`ros2`	ROS 2 bridges and adapters
`mqtt`	MQTT pub/sub
`hardware`	Board profiles, HAL
`sensors`	Lidar, camera, IMU drivers
`actuators`	Motor, servo, gripper drivers
`digital-twin`	Twin sync and replay
`safety`	Constraint checkers, monitors
`hri`	Speech, gesture, dialogue
`testing`	Test harnesses, mocks

categories = ["sensors", "hardware"]

Driver / adapter packages

Community sensor and actuator drivers follow the adapter model:

[package]
name = "spanda-lidar-rplidar"
version = "0.1.0"
license = "MIT"

[adapter]
provides = ["LidarAdapter", "Topic<LidarScan>"]
requires = ["serial.port", "lidar.read"]

[capabilities]
uses = ["serial.port", "lidar.read"]

[safety]
level = "hardware_safe"
can_control_actuators = false

In Spanda source:

module spanda_lidar_rplidar;

import sensors.lidar;
import std.sensors;

The provides list declares symbols exported to consumers; requires lists runtime capabilities the driver needs.

Framework packages

Framework packages wrap external systems (ROS 2, MQTT, Gazebo) and expose Spanda-native import paths:

import robotics.ros2;
import communication.mqtt;
import sim.gazebo;

Add them as dependencies:

[dependencies]
spanda-ros2 = "0.1.0"
spanda-sim-gazebo = "0.1.0"

AI provider packages

spanda-openai is included as a reference provider package in this repository. It exports ai.openai.complete(prompt) and routes through the Python subprocess bridge (scripts/spanda_python_bridge.py) to call OpenAI when OPENAI_API_KEY is present.

Without an API key, the bridge returns deterministic mock completions so tests and simulations remain reproducible.

Safety and trust

Community packages must declare a safety level. Defaults:

New packages start at experimental with requires_review = true
Driver packages that only read sensors should set can_control_actuators = false
Packages controlling actuators on real hardware should target hardware_safe or certified

Applications gate deployment by allowed safety levels and capability grants.

License compatibility

Declare your package license in [package] and optionally list compatible dependency licenses:

[package]
license = "Apache-2.0"

license_compat = ["Apache-2.0", "MIT"]

Validation warns when dependency licenses may conflict with application policy.

Contributing a package

Run spanda init my-package
Implement sources under src/
Declare [adapter], [capabilities], and [safety] appropriately
Add tests under tests/
Run spanda publish to validate locally
(Future) Submit to the public registry

See examples/packages/ for reference implementations.

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