C4 Level 2 — Container view¶

@startuml vmaf-c4-container
!include <C4/C4_Container>

title VMAFx — Containers

Person(user, "Video engineer")
Person(agent, "Coding agent")

System_Boundary(vmaf, "VMAFx") {
  Container(libvmaf, "libvmaf", "C11", "Metric engine, feature extractors, backend dispatch, public API")
  Container(cli, "vmaf + vmaf_bench", "C11", "End-user CLI and micro-benchmark harness — link libvmaf")
  Container(dnn, "core/src/dnn", "C11 + ONNX Runtime", "Tiny-AI inference layer (loader, op-allowlist, session)")
  Container(ai, "ai/", "Python 3.12 + PyTorch + Lightning", "Tiny-AI training + ONNX export (vmaf-train CLI)")
  Container(mcp, "mcp-server/vmaf-mcp", "Python JSON-RPC", "MCP tools: vmaf_score, list_models, list_backends, run_benchmark")
  Container(py, "python/vmaf", "Python", "Classic SVM training harness + Python bindings")
  ContainerDb(model, "model/", "Files", "Shipped .json/.pkl VMAF models + model/tiny/*.onnx with registry.json")
  ContainerDb(testdata, "testdata/", "Files", "YUV fixtures + fork benchmark JSONs (NOT Netflix goldens)")
}

System_Ext(ort, "ONNX Runtime")
System_Ext(gh, "GitHub")

Rel(user, cli, "Runs `vmaf --tiny-model ... ref.yuv dist.yuv`")
Rel(user, mcp, "Connects over JSON-RPC from an MCP-capable client")
Rel(agent, ai, "Trains / exports new tiny models")

Rel(cli, libvmaf, "links")
Rel(libvmaf, dnn, "opens vmaf_dnn_session_* when a tiny model is loaded")
Rel(dnn, ort, "C API: CreateSession, Run")
Rel(dnn, model, "Reads .onnx + registry.json; verifies sha256")

Rel(ai, model, "Writes .onnx checkpoints + registry entries")

Rel(mcp, libvmaf, "In-process bindings or vmaf CLI subprocess")
Rel(py, libvmaf, "Bindings for classic harness")

Rel(cli, testdata, "Reads fixtures for benchmarks")
Rel(gh, testdata, "CI validates snapshot JSONs against backends")

@enduml