F3 file format
Ranked 5 of 5 file formats by recommenders
Self-describing file format with a WebAssembly decoder, so no language-specific library is needed. Critics say its readme does not explain who should use it.
Self-describing file format with a WebAssembly decoder, so no language-specific library is needed. Critics say its readme does not explain who should use it.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 55%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Self-describing design praised by readers
“This bit is quite genius, rather than depend on a language-specific SDK/lib for working with the formats”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “F3” “I love the idea, and I developed something similar of myself in the past”
Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “F3”
Other file formats people recommend
The four most recommended other file formats, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Parquet | 40 | 17 | 70% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Gwtar | 10 | 7 | 59% | 1 | — | — |
| Safetensors | 7 | 2 | 78% | 4 | — | — |
| JSON Canvas | 7 | 3 | 70% | 2 | — | — |
| F3 file formatThis page | 6 | 5 | 55% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 11 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“F3 seems to be a reasonable archival data format.”
“few commits, PRs, history, actual examples etc. It's pretty thin.”
“F3 seems to sacrifice fast analytics for the wasm decoder.”
“My initial reaction that it's somewhat silly.”
“putting the decoding logic inside an WASM binary introduces an active execution layer”
“any self-describing system can fall into "there are too many competing features and nobody handles them all" exactly as easily as any other format”
“I love the idea, and I developed something similar of myself in the past”
“This bit is quite genius, rather than depend on a language-specific SDK/lib for working with the formats”
“from the current readme, it's not clear who should use this and why”
“there's so many excellent works to improve data storage”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.