Papers are not the only way to show rigor and are not even sufficient.
Should we insult you with a huge list of rigorous enough things that were not designed in a paper? Or perhaps a list of unrigorous papers?
I hope you are not using a computer with a common OS and the tools it comes with because you might be in for some sadness and sorrow.
Or maybe your snark is unwarranted and you should take a step back on this.
I think nobody is claiming WASI is a brand new idea that is built from scratch without taking inspiration from anything old. On the contrary, it is immediately obvious to anyone with the most basic culture on the topic reading about WASI that it takes inspiration from previous work. And it's fine.