What the MPAI Store is and does
MPAI — "Moving Picture, Audio and Data Coding by Artificial Intelligence" — is a standards organization that builds AI applications from standardized, swappable building blocks instead of monolithic systems. The MPAI Store is the ecosystem's trusted distribution hub.
The building blocks
| Term | What it is |
|---|---|
| AIM — AI Module | The atomic processing component, with a defined function and a standardized interface (specified input/output). Any AIM can be swapped for another implementation with the same function and interface — this is MPAI's notion of interoperability. A composite AIM contains SubAIMs. |
| Composite AIM | An AIM built from other AIMs wired together to perform a complete use case (e.g. answering a spoken question about an image). |
| AIF — AI Framework (MPAI-AIF) | The standardized runtime that executes AIMs, composite or not. It provides a Controller plus services for inter-AIM communication, shared storage, and access to the MPAI Store. |
| Metadata | Each AIM ships a JSON metadata document describing its identity, ports, sub-AIMs, topology, concrete implementations, and resource policies. That document is what this Store validates, stamps with its identifiers, and publishes. |
The Store's role
Under the MPAI-GME (Governance of the MPAI Ecosystem) standard, the Store is three things at once. This is the role the standard defines — not a description of what this registry performs; see the box below for that.
- Registration Authority — registers developers ("Implementers") and issues each a unique Implementer ID. Performed here.
- Verification gate — checks submissions before distribution, and tests their claimed conformance to the relevant MPAI standard. Partly performed here: this registry validates metadata against the schema and the AIM's published definition, and authenticates the implementer.
- Distribution catalogue — publishes approved implementations, labeled with their Interoperability Level, for consumers to find and run. Performed here as a catalogue only — implementers host their own archives.
The five ecosystem roles
These are the roles as MPAI-GME defines them, for the ecosystem as a whole. The "MPAI Store" row describes what a Store is specified to do — see the box above for what this registry does.
| Role | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| MPAI | Develops the standards (Technical, Reference Software, Conformance, Performance). |
| Implementers | Build AIM and AIF implementations and submit them to the Store. |
| Performance Assessors | MPAI-appointed bodies that assess an implementation's performance (reliability, robustness, fairness, replicability). |
| MPAI Store | Registers Implementers, verifies security, tests conformance, labels by Interoperability Level, and distributes. This registry performs registration, metadata validation and labelling only — see the box above. |
| Users | Download and run implementations; may report Experience Scores. |
The lifecycle
- Onboard. A developer applies and, once approved, is issued an Implementer ID.
- Submit. The Implementer sends the AIM metadata, plus the URL, SHA-256 and size of the archive they host (/submit).
- Assess. The Store checks the metadata against the MPAI metadata schema and the AIM's published definition, and checks the implementer's credentials, before it can be published.
- Assign & publish. The Store assigns an Implementation ID, stamps it into the metadata, signs a trust statement binding the metadata and the archive's hash, and publishes.
- Consume. A consumer's SCI (Store Consumer Interface) searches the Store, reads the Implementation ID, fetches the metadata and signed statement, verifies them, downloads the AIMs, and a Controller instantiates and runs them inside an AIF.
Interoperability Levels (the trust signal)
MPAI labels each published implementation with one of three levels; trust increases from 1 to 3. The "what is verified" column describes what each level means in the MPAI standard — not what this registry performs. As above, this registry issues Level 1 only, on the basis of schema validation and implementer authentication.
| Level | Meaning | What is verified |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Implementer-specific, but runs in a conformant MPAI-AIF. | Security verified; conformance to MPAI-AIF tested. |
| Level 2 | Conforms to a published MPAI Application Standard (e.g. MPAI-MMC). | Security verified; conformance to that standard tested. |
| Level 3 | Level 2, plus validated by a Performance Assessor. | Additionally assessed Reliable, Robust, Fair, Replicable. |
Worked example: Answer to Multimodal Question
MMC-AMQ-V2.5 is a composite AIM in MPAI-MMC (Multimodal Conversation). Answer to Multimodal Question: receives a Visual Object and a question - as a Speech Object or a Text Object - and returns the answer as a Portable Avatar, which utters it, and the Visual Object. Automatic Speech Recognition recognises the spoken question; Text and Image Query answers the question about the image; Text-To-Speech makes the Speech Object of the answer; Portable Avatar Multiplexing puts the answer, text and speech, in the Portable Avatar, which the User Agent renders.
Each part is an AIM with its own definition, and the composite's metadata wires their ports together
in its Topology. See Answer to Multimodal Question in the registry →