WasmAssembly Squishy Wasm apps using Extism with Dylibso's Steve Manuel - WasmAssembly
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Nov 18, 2024 
Steve Manuel, co-founder of Dylibso and creator of Extism, builds tools to make software extensible with WebAssembly. He talks about making software “squishy” with Extism, the tool suite (XTP, Observe, Chicory), running and observing WASM plugins in production, and practical tradeoffs between Extism and the WebAssembly component model.
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Wasm Unlocks Safe In-Process Extensibility
- WebAssembly enables safe, in-process extensibility by combining isolation with near-native performance.
- Dylibso uses Wasm to make applications 'squishy' so customers can extend core software safely.
Make SaaS Extensible With In-Process Plugins
- Use XTP to let customers push plugins directly into SaaS applications and run them in-process safely.
- Prefer in-process Wasm execution over remote calls when you need extensibility with performance.
Wasm Needs New Observability Patterns
- Traditional telemetry agents can't inspect isolated Wasm code, so Dylibso built Observe to instrument across runtimes.
- Observe emits OpenTelemetry and can mutate uninstrumented Wasm modules to add profiling hooks.