# google/wuffs

Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely

Repository: https://github.com/google/wuffs
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/wuffs
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: parsing, memory-safety, programming-language, codec
Last push: 2026-08-08T01:26:30+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 75/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 96, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3216, "days_push": 26, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4820, forks 145 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:00.509875+00:00)

## What it is
Wuffs is a memory-safe programming language plus a standard library for safely parsing, decoding and encoding untrusted file formats such as images, audio, video, fonts and compressed archives. It compiles to fast C code that can be used in C/C++ projects without the Wuffs toolchain, with buffer overflow, integer overflow and null dereference checks proven at compile time.

## Use cases
- decode png gif jpeg images safely in C or C++
- parse untrusted file formats without memory safety bugs
- fast deflate and bzip2 decompression alternative to zlib
- embed safe codecs in browsers or operating systems
- write memory-safe decoders that run as fast as C
- decompress compressed archives without buffer overflows

## When to choose
- you need C-speed codecs with memory safety guarantees
- you are parsing untrusted input in a large C/C++ codebase like a browser
- performance of zlib, libpng or giflib is a bottleneck

## When to avoid
- you need a general purpose programming language for applications
- you want quick development - Wuffs requires explicit safety annotations and is slower to write
- you need formats not covered by its standard library

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: parser, image-processing, compression, serialization, programming-language
- domain: parsers, programming-languages, security, files, image-processing
- platform: cpp, c, cross-platform
- tags: memory-safety, codec, decoders, compile-time-verification, untrusted-input, transpiled-c

## Member repositories
- google/wuffs (main) score 75

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:00.509875+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:18:32.331482+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/google/wuffs (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:00.509875+00:00, sha ecb6d1e1ee97)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.