First iteration of the mut-local milestone (foundation step on the
Stateful-islands roadmap path). Lands the schema + surface tier:
Term::Mut, Term::Assign, and the nested MutVar struct become
first-class AST nodes that round-trip cleanly through Form A.
Typecheck and codegen recognition are deferred to mut.2 and mut.3
per the spec's out-of-iteration boundary; reaching either dispatch
entry point with these variants produces CheckError::Internal /
CodegenError::Internal with a 'deferred to iter mut.{2,3}' message.
Concretely:
- crates/ailang-core/src/ast.rs: two new Term variants behind
#[serde(tag = 't')]; pub struct MutVar { name, ty, init } adjacent
to Arm. Two canonical-bytes pin tests for the explicit-empty-vars
serialisation and the assign round-trip.
- ~25 substantive Term-walker arms across ailang-core/desugar,
ailang-core/workspace, ailang-check (lib + lift + linearity + mono
+ pre_desugar_validation + reuse_shape + uniqueness),
ailang-codegen (escape + lambda + lib), ailang-prose, and
crates/ail/src/main.rs. Universal policy: substantive recurse-into-
children at every site; only the two dispatch entry points
(synth in ailang-check, lower_term in ailang-codegen) stub with
Internal-error. One test-side walker arm in
crates/ail/tests/codegen_import_map_fallback_pin.rs not
enumerated by the plan was added as well (defensive recursion).
- ailang-surface: parse_mut + parse_assign helpers; Term::Mut
body desugared from a flat statement sequence into a right-folded
Term::Seq chain inside the JSON-AST. Print arms in print.rs match
the parser convention. EBNF prologue + crates/ailang-core/specs/
form_a.md productions updated. Four new parser pin tests cover
the empty-mut, single-var, body-required, and vars-only-no-body
cases.
- Drift + coverage tests extended: design_schema_drift.rs adds two
exemplars + match arms; schema_coverage.rs adds two VariantTag
entries + EXPECTED_VARIANTS + visit_term arms; spec_drift.rs adds
two exemplars + match arms. DESIGN.md §'Term (expression)' gets
jsonc-blocked schemas for the two new variants.
- examples/mut.ail: six-fn round-trip fixture exercising empty mut,
single-var, two-var, nested-shadow, and the four supported scalar
return types (Int, Float, Bool, Unit). The round_trip auto-glob
and schema_coverage corpus walker both pick it up.
Plan deviation: the plan named lib.rs:2572 as the typecheck
dispatch stub site, but that line is actually verify_tail_positions
(substantive walker). The real dispatch is synth (3403-area, stub
at 3489); the orchestrator routed correctly.
Tests: 564 → 579 green; cargo build green; round-trip green for
the new fixture; all drift + coverage tests green.
Journal: docs/journals/2026-05-15-iter-mut.1.md.
Refs: docs/specs/2026-05-15-mut-local.md, docs/plans/2026-05-15-iter-mut.1.md.
Single iter shipping the post-milestone-24 follow-up named in
docs/specs/2026-05-14-retire-per-type-print-effects.md. After this
iter the only surviving direct-output effect-op is `io/print_str`;
all per-type print primitives are replaced by the polymorphic
`print` helper (prelude, iter 24.3).
Components:
- 92 examples/*.ail fixtures migrated (do io/print_<T> x) →
(app print x); 6 .prose.txt snapshots regenerated via `ail prose`.
- Four-site lockstep compiler deletion: crates/ailang-check/src/builtins.rs
(3 effect_ops.insert blocks + 3 list() rows + the
install_io_print_float_signature test + module + EffectOpSig
doc-comments); crates/ailang-codegen/src/lib.rs lower_app
(3 arms + lowers_io_print_float test); crates/ailang-codegen/src/synth.rs
builtin_effect_op_ret match-arm pattern. Dead `intern_string`
helper removed as a follow-up.
- Five incidental test-body migrations (ailang-check x2, ailang-core
spec_drift + design_schema_drift, ailang-surface/src/lex.rs,
ailang-prose/src/lib.rs round-trip test).
- Cat B test-harness patch: six IR-shape tests in
crates/ail/tests/e2e.rs gained a monomorphise_workspace call
before lower_workspace_with_alloc so they follow the same
pipeline as `ail build` (the home-rolled desugar+lift loop
stayed because mono's precondition is "already lifted"; mono
inserts after lift).
- Six doc-comment touch-ups (lex.rs module doc, parse.rs
diagnostic example, ail/src/main.rs x2, runtime/str.c %g anchor,
crates/ailang-core/specs/form_a.md surface-spec example).
- DESIGN.md seven-site sweep (Decision 11 example, Polymorphic
print past-tense, Heap-Str output sentence, effect-op
invocation comment, Float NaN paragraph re-anchored on
float_to_str, two "What is supported" lists).
- Three E2E test-comment polish + four IR-snapshot refresh + one
canonical-hash pin update (plan-unanticipated downstream
consequences of the corpus migration).
- bench/{check,compile_check,cross_lang}.py: all exit 0; no
ratification needed.
- Roadmap entry struck through; per-iter journal at
docs/journals/2026-05-14-iter-rpe.1.md.
Tests 564/0/3. cargo clippy and cargo doc: zero warnings.
Two upstream codegen bugs surfaced during the first BLOCKED
attempt and were fixed in separate iters before this retry:
- 1fb225e bugfix: mono cursor misalignment at poly-free-fn Var
with class-constrained Forall.
- feb9413 bugfix: print leak — propagate ret_mode through rigid
substitution + prelude Show.show ret_mode.
Known debt (carried forward for next /audit):
- Emitter.strings field is functionally dead post-iter (orphan
after intern_string removal); cycles over empty map harmlessly.
Adds Def::Class(ClassDef) and Def::Instance(InstanceDef) variants per
Decision 11 §"Form-A schema". All optional fields (superclass, doc,
default body) carry skip_serializing_if so canonical-JSON bytes of
pre-22b fixtures stay bit-identical.
Downstream match-on-Def sites are extended with explicit Class/Instance
arms. Behaviour for 22b.1 is placeholder (skip in typecheck/codegen,
one-line summary in pretty/manifest, placeholder marker in prose/print)
with TODO comments naming the deferred sub-iters (22b.2 typecheck,
22b.3 codegen, 22b.4 prose-projection arms).
Closes a design hole shipped in 20d: the merge-prose prompt instructed
the LLM to emit JSON-AST and gave a 12-line schema-essentials reminder.
JSON-AST is the canonical hashable artefact, not a writing surface; the
reminder was not a language spec. Foreign LLMs had no realistic shot.
20f makes two coupled changes:
1) The LLM now emits Form-A (the canonical authoring surface fixed by
Decision 6). merge-prose loads the original via ailang_core::load_module
and re-renders via ailang_surface::print before embedding (round-trip
is a gating contract on the surface crate, so this is lossless). The
user runs `ail parse foo.new.ailx` to recover JSON, then `ail check`.
2) crates/ailang-core/specs/form_a.md is the complete LLM-targeted
Form-A specification — grammar, every term/pattern/type/def keyword,
schema invariants, pitfall catalogue, four few-shot modules from
examples/*.ailx. Exported as ailang_core::FORM_A_SPEC via include_str!
and embedded verbatim in every merge-prose prompt.
Drift detection in crates/ailang-core/tests/spec_drift.rs: every variant
of Term, Pattern, Type, Def, Literal is reached via exhaustive `match`.
The arms are not the assertion — adding a new variant without updating
the match is a compile error before the test runs. Once matched, an
anchor string is asserted to appear in FORM_A_SPEC. 8 tests, all green.
The hand-written + mechanical-drift-test combo addresses the user's
"distance to code is too big" concern about a docs-only spec. Generator
overkill rejected: structural drift is mechanically caught, but prose
explanation, schema-invariant catalogue, pitfall list, and few-shot
corpus cannot be emitted from AST shape alone.
Tests:
- ailang-core: +8 spec_drift tests; existing 12 unchanged
- ail unit (3): rewritten in lockstep — assert (own T)/(effects IO)
landmarks, FORM-A SPECIFICATION header, FORM_A_SPEC body verbatim
- ail e2e merge_prose_prints_framed_prompt: rewritten — assert
`(module foo` + `FORM-A SPECIFICATION` instead of `ailang/v0`
- Workspace: all green
Richer integration paths (LLM tool-use, MCP server, LSP) were named
in the design discussion and deferred per "kiss". All three layer
additively on the static-prompt path; static prompt remains the
lowest-common-denominator fallback.
Brummel