AILang/docs/DESIGN.md

# AILang — design decisions

This document records the core decisions for AILang. It is my contract with
myself across future iterations. Prefer cuts over growth.

## Goal

AILang is a programming language for LLM authors. It compiles to LLVM IR.
Performance: native, no GC for the MVP.

Optimised for:

- **Machine readability** over human ergonomics. The source is structured.
- **Local reasoning.** Every definition carries its full type and effects.
- **Provability.** Pure core language, explicit effects, optional refinements.
- **Robustness against hallucinations.** Symbols are hashable; tools can verify
  existence without spending context window.

## Project ecosystem

AILang is not just a language but an ecosystem. The language on its own is
only valuable when its surroundings make it usable, checkable, and
extensible for its target user (LLM authors). The repo therefore contains
several equally important components — none of them optional, all of them
evolving in lockstep with the language:

- **Language core** (`crates/ailang-core`, `crates/ailang-check`,
  `crates/ailang-codegen`): AST, type system, codegen.
- **CLI** (`crates/ail`): toolchain for tooling consumers — `manifest`,
  `describe`, `deps`, `check`, `build`, etc., preferably with `--json` for
  machine consumption.
- **Examples** (`examples/`): canonical `.ail.json` programs. They are
  specification anchors, not demos — the E2E suite hangs off them.
- **Agents** (`agents/`): specialised sub-prompts (implementer,
  architect, tester, debugger) that form the project's own LLM tooling.
  They are a versioned part of the repo. See `agents/README.md`.
- **Docs** (`docs/`): DESIGN.md (what and why), JOURNAL.md (history).
- **Tests**: unit tests per crate plus E2E in `crates/ail/tests/e2e.rs`. Every
  new compiler path needs a test, otherwise the feature does not count as done.

When the language grows, these components grow with it. New tools that
strengthen the LLM tooling (e.g. `ail diff`, IR snapshot diffs, new agents)
explicitly belong in the ecosystem inventory of this section and are added
here as soon as they are established.

## Project language: English

All in-tree content is written in English: source code (identifiers,
comments, string literals, CLI help), design documents, the journal, agent
prompts, READMEs, commit messages, examples, and `CLAUDE.md`. The live
conversation between user and me stays German for ergonomic reasons;
everything that lands in git is English. This keeps diffs and tooling output
uniform and matches the audience for AILang (LLM authors), for whom English
is the default.

## Decision 1: source = data, not text

A module is a JSON object with a fixed schema. There is no parser for
free-form text. Typos in identifiers turn into hash-lookup errors that the
compiler proposes a fix for directly.

A textual form exists (`.ail`, S-expression-like), but only as a
bidirectional projection of the JSON form. It is intended for human reviews
and diffs.

**Canonical format:** `.ail.json` with deterministic key order.

## Decision 2: content-addressed definitions

Every top-level definition has a `hash` value (BLAKE3 over canonical JSON
without the `hash` field itself). References between definitions go primarily
by name — names are for readability. The hash is the canonical identity.

Advantages:

- Refactoring by adding new defs, not by in-place change. Old versions stay
  callable until manually removed.
- Caching of typecheck results and codegen per hash.
- Diffs show exactly which def has changed.

## Decision 3: pure core language + algebraic effects

The default is total, pure functions. Effects are declared as a set in the
function type: `(Int) -> Int ![IO]`. The effect set is row-polymorphic
(`![IO | r]`). In the MVP only the effects `IO` and `Diverge` (for infinite
loops) are wired up.

This is the most important LLM property: when I read a function, I can trust
its signature without reading the body.

## Decision 4: Hindley-Milner + optional refinements

MVP: HM with let-polymorphism. All types are inferable, but at the top level
they must always be explicitly annotated (for local reasoning).

Later: refinement annotations that escalate to SMT. `(i: Int | i >= 0)`. They
are reserved in the AST from the start, but in the MVP they are simply passed
through as opaque strings.

## Decision 5: emit LLVM IR as text

Instead of `inkwell` or `llvm-sys`: AILang produces `.ll` files as strings
and hands them to `clang` for linking.

Rationale:

- The LLVM IR text syntax is largely stable across versions.
- No build dependency on a specific libllvm version.
- Generated code is trivially inspectable, which makes debugging much easier.
- An LLM can read the generated IR directly, which is harder with opaque
  library calls.

Trade-off: no inline optimisations through the LLVM API. We rely on
`clang -O2` as the standard pipeline.

## Decision 6: authoring surface (Iter 14b — WIP)

**Status: design pass in progress.** Reading without skipping the JOURNAL
will leave this section ahead of the implementation.

### Why this is opening up

Iters 1 through 14a authored everything as raw `*.ail.json`. That worked
for 17 fixture files (each ≤ 60 LOC of JSON) but does not scale. Two
breaking signals:

1. The token-economy cost of the JSON-AST is massive: a single integer
   literal `1` is encoded as `{"t":"lit","lit":{"kind":"int","value":1}}`
   — ~38 tokens of structural overhead per bit of semantics. For a stdlib
   in the 200–500 def range this displaces real attention budget.
2. JSON-AST authoring exposes a class of errors (wrong field names,
   silently-accepted extra fields under `#[serde(default)]`,
   inconsistent ctor casing) that surface only at load time. The
   schema is correct-by-construction in storage but **error-prone in
   authoring**.

Decision 1 anticipated this: it says a textual form exists "as a
bidirectional projection of the JSON form." The pretty-printer already
emits S-expression-style text (see `crates/ailang-core/src/pretty.rs`).
What is missing is the inverse direction — text → AST. Decision 6
makes that inverse the canonical authoring surface, with JSON-AST
demoted to "storage and exchange" only.

### Constraints (hard, in priority order)

1. **Formalizable for a foreign LLM.** The grammar must fit in an
   EBNF/PEG spec of ≤ 30 productions. A model that has never seen
   AILang must be able to read the spec and produce conforming source
   zero-shot. Rules out: precedence between binary operators,
   semantic indentation, maximal-munch lexing, context-sensitive
   reductions.
2. **AST-isomorphic.** Every surface form maps to exactly one AST
   shape. Round-trip surface → AST → canonical JSON → AST → surface
   is the identity (modulo formatting). Hashes computed via the
   round-tripped JSON must equal hashes of the same module written
   directly in JSON.
3. **No external symbols.** ASCII only. No Greek (`∀`), no arrows
   (`→`), no subscripts. Reasoning: I substitute mojibake for
   non-ASCII characters under context pressure; foreign LLMs vary
   in how they tokenize Unicode.
4. **No precedence.** Either everything is parenthesized, or there
   are no infix operators. Prefer the latter — `add(x, 1)` over
   `x + 1`. Removes a fail mode for both me and foreign LLMs.
5. **No semantic indentation.** Block structure expressed by paired
   delimiters or terminator tokens. Indentation is informational
   only; the parser ignores it.
6. **One construct per token-list.** Every AST node corresponds to
   exactly one parenthesized form (or atom). No "sometimes you can
   omit the parens" rules.
7. **AST surface stays frozen.** The surface adapts to the AST, not
   the other way around. We do not change the JSON schema or
   invalidate hashes to make the surface prettier.

### Candidate notations (same `map` encoded in each)

The reference target — the polymorphic `map` from `examples/list_map_poly.ail.json`:

```
data List a where Nil | Cons a (List a)
fn map : forall a b. ((a) -> b, List a) -> List b
       = \f xs. match xs of Nil -> Nil
                          | Cons h t -> Cons(f(h), map(f, t))
```

#### (A) S-expression with fully-tagged AST nodes

```
(module list_map_poly

  (data List (vars a)
    (ctor Nil)
    (ctor Cons a (con List a)))

  (fn inc
    (type (fn-type (params (con Int)) (ret (con Int))))
    (params x)
    (body (app + x 1)))

  (fn map
    (type
      (forall (vars a b)
        (fn-type
          (params (fn-type (params a) (ret b)) (con List a))
          (ret (con List b)))))
    (params f xs)
    (body
      (match xs
        (case (pat-ctor Nil) (term-ctor List Nil))
        (case (pat-ctor Cons h t)
          (term-ctor List Cons
            (app f h)
            (app map f t)))))))
```

Grammar core (3-rule lexical layer + ~25 named-form productions):
```
sexpr  ::= atom | "(" sexpr* ")"
atom   ::= integer | string | ident
ident  ::= any maximal non-whitespace, non-paren run that is not
           a recognised integer or string literal.
```

The lexer recognises one delimiter (`(` / `)`) and whitespace.
Every other maximal token is classified post-hoc:
- All-digit run with optional leading `-` → integer atom.
- `"`-delimited run → string atom.
- Otherwise → ident.

Consequence: operators like `+`, `==`, `<=`, `**`, qualified
names like `io/print_int`, and cross-module references like
`std_list.map` are all single ident tokens with no special lex
rule. The only reserved tokens are `(`, `)`, and whitespace.
Bool literals (`true`, `false`) and unit (`(lit-unit)`) are
disambiguated by parser context, not by lex.

Every AST node form has a unique head keyword (`module`, `data`,
`fn`, `forall`, `fn-type`, `con`, `var`, `app`, `lam`, `match`,
`case`, `pat-ctor`, `term-ctor`, `do`, `seq`, ...). A bare atom in
a positional slot (e.g. inside `(con List a)` second position) is
a name reference whose **sort** is determined by the parent slot:

- inside `(con NAME args...)` second-and-later positions → type
  expression. Bare atom there ⇒ `Type::Var { name }`.
- inside `(app HEAD args...)` first position ⇒ `Term::Var`.
- inside `(pat-ctor CTOR fields...)` field positions ⇒
  `Pattern::Var`.
- inside `(case PAT BODY)` second position ⇒ term.

There is **no lexical case rule**. To construct a value with a
ctor, write `(term-ctor TypeName CtorName args...)`. To match
against one, write `(pat-ctor CtorName fields...)`. Capitalised
identifiers carry no special meaning to the parser. This rules
out a class of silent errors ("I forgot to capitalise `Cons` and
it parsed as a function call").

**Pros:** smallest formal grammar of any candidate (the lexical
core is 3 rules; the named-form productions are uniform — every
node a tagged list). Foreign-LLM bar lowest. Round-trip with the
existing pretty-printer is a refactor of `pretty.rs` to emit this
tagged form, plus a new parser.

**Cons:** paren density is high. `(forall (vars a b) (fn-type
...))` has more visual nesting than the current pretty-printer's
`forall a. (...) -> ...`. Verbosity is ~2× JSON for the same node
when measured in characters, but ~8× shorter in lines (the
existing JSON `box.ail.json` of 160 lines becomes ~20 lines in
this form).

#### (B) Indented record-style with explicit terminators

```
module std_list

data List(a):
  Nil
  Cons(a, List(a))
end

fn map:
  type: forall a b. fn(fn(a) -> b, List(a)) -> List(b)
  params: f, xs
  body:
    match xs:
      Nil          => Nil
      Cons(h, t)   => Cons(f(h), map(f, t))
    end
end
```

Grammar core (~20–30 productions): module-level (def/data/end), type
sub-grammar (forall, fn, con, var), term sub-grammar (lam, match,
ctor, app, lit, var, seq), pattern sub-grammar.

**Pros:** higher information density per line, closer to mainstream
ML/Haskell shape. **Cons:** four sub-grammars instead of one.
`forall a b. fn(...)` keeps a pseudo-precedence (`->` binds tighter
than the outer `fn(...)` wrapper). Foreign-LLM bar higher.

#### (C) Pretty-printer-as-source

Use exactly the format `pretty::module` already emits, plus a parser
that accepts it. The existing pretty-printer's quirks (`::` for
type-of, `[params]` for fn-params, `<a>` for type-args, `forall a. ...`,
`!IO`, `()` ambiguous between unit-arg-list and empty-form) become
the spec.

**Pros:** zero churn — the existing pretty-printer is already the
spec; only the inverse is missing. Round-trip is the identity by
construction. **Cons:** the existing format mixes four mini-dialects
(s-expr at term level, ML-shape at type level, square brackets for
params, `<>` for type args). Formalising it crisply is harder than
designing a uniform form from scratch.

### First choice and rollback plan

**Try (A) first.** Reasoning: constraint 1 (formalizable) outweighs
constraint readability. (A) has a 3-rule core grammar with one
lexical disambiguation rule. (B) doubles the rule count and
re-introduces a soft form of precedence (`->` inside `forall`).
(C) is tempting because it is zero-design but the resulting spec is
visibly heterogeneous, which is exactly what constraint 1 was meant
to rule out.

If implementing (A) reveals that paren density actively hurts my
authoring (measurable: I make more wrong-paren errors than the
JSON-AST shape produced before), roll back and try (C). (B) stays
on the shelf for a future iter only if both fail.

### Implementation outline (Iter 14c onwards, not done in 14b)

- `crates/ailang-surface` — new crate. PEG parser → existing
  `ailang-core::ast` types. No new AST nodes.
- Round-trip test: every `examples/*.ail.json` → emit via
  `pretty::module` → parse via new crate → re-canonicalise →
  hash-equivalent to original. Hash equivalence is the truth check;
  no surface form ships if a single fixture loses its hash.
- CLI: `ail parse <surface-file> -o <json-file>`. Symmetric to the
  existing `ail render`.
- Then: rewrite one existing fixture (probably `box.ail.json`) in
  the surface, hash-compare, commit both forms. Stdlib starts in
  the surface from day one.

## Mangling scheme (Iter 5c)

All AILang functions are mangled to `@ail_<module>_<def>` — even in the
single-module case. Constants likewise (`@ail_<module>_<const>`). Global
string literals carry a short hint for readability:
`@.str_<module>_<hint>_<idx>` (e.g. `@.str_sum_fmt_int_0`). The entry point
is a `define i32 @main()` trampoline (C / LLVM ABI) that calls
`@ail_<entry-module>_main()`. `source_filename` exists exactly once per
workspace and carries the entry-module name (`<entry-module>.ail`).

## Convention: qualified cross-module references (Iter 5b)

Cross-module calls use **no** new AST node. Instead, a `Term::Var { name }`
with exactly one dot in the name is a qualified reference: `<prefix>.<def>`.

- `<prefix>` is an import alias (`import { module: "X", as: "<prefix>" }`)
  or, when imported without an alias, the module name itself.
- `<def>` is the name of a top-level definition in the target module.
- Def names MUST NOT contain a dot — the typechecker reports
  `invalid-def-name` with `ctx: { "reason": "contains-dot" }`.
- The workspace loader (Iter 5a) finds all reachable modules; the
  typechecker (Iter 5b, `check_workspace`) resolves dotted names through the
  import map. Diagnostic codes: `unknown-module` (prefix not imported),
  `unknown-import` (module found, def not).

Hash stability: no new AST node, no renamed fields — all previous module
hashes stay bit-identical.

## Data model (MVP)

### Module

```jsonc
{
  "schema": "ailang/v0",
  "name": "<id>",
  "imports": [{ "module": "<id>", "as": "<id>" }],
  "defs": [Def...]
}
```

### Def

`kind ∈ { "fn", "type", "effect", "const" }`. In the MVP only `fn` and `const`.

```jsonc
{
  "kind": "fn",
  "name": "<id>",
  "type": Type,
  "params": ["<id>"...],
  "body": Term,
  "doc": "<optional string>"
}
```

### Term (expression)

```jsonc
{ "t": "lit", "lit": { "kind": "int" | "bool" | "unit", "value": ... } }
{ "t": "var", "name": "<id>" }
{ "t": "app", "fn": Term, "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "let", "name": "<id>", "value": Term, "body": Term }
{ "t": "if", "cond": Term, "then": Term, "else": Term }
{ "t": "do", "op": "<eff>/<op>", "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "ctor", "type": "<id>", "ctor": "<id>", "args": [Term...] }
{ "t": "match", "scrutinee": Term, "arms": [Arm...] }
{ "t": "lam",
  "params": ["<id>"...],
  "paramTypes": [Type...],
  "retType": Type,
  "effects": ["<id>"...],
  "body": Term }
{ "t": "seq", "lhs": Term, "rhs": Term }
```

In the MVP, `do` is only a direct call to a built-in effect op (no handler).
A `lam` term constructs an anonymous function value; free variables of
its body are captured from the enclosing scope (see Iter 8 closure
conversion in JOURNAL). A `seq` term evaluates `lhs` for its effects
(its result must be Unit) and yields `rhs`'s value — equivalent to
`let _ = lhs in rhs`.

### Type

```jsonc
{ "k": "con", "name": "Int" }
{ "k": "con", "name": "Bool" }
{ "k": "con", "name": "Unit" }
{ "k": "fn", "params": [Type...], "ret": Type, "effects": ["IO"...] }
{ "k": "var", "name": "a" }
{ "k": "forall", "vars": ["a"...], "body": Type }
```

## Pipeline

```
.ail.json  ─┐
            ├─ load + validate schema
            ├─ resolve names + assign hashes
            ├─ typecheck (HM, effect rows)
            ├─ lower to MIR (SSA-like, named SSA values)
            ├─ emit LLVM IR (.ll)
            └─ clang -O2 *.ll -o binary
```

## CLI

```
ail check <module.ail.json>      — loads, validates, typechecks
ail manifest <module.ail.json>   — table: name :: type !effects [hash]
ail describe <module> <name>     — detail of a definition
ail render <module>              — JSON → pretty-print
ail parse <module.ail>           — pretty-print → JSON (for bootstrapping)
ail emit-ir <module>             — writes .ll
ail build <module>               — full pipeline → binary
ail run <module>                 — build + execute (tempdir), passthrough exit code
```

## Verification and correctness (across cycles)

1. **Snapshot tests** for the pretty-printer and IR emit. The diff makes
   regressions visible immediately.
2. **Property tests** for the JSON ↔ pretty-print roundtrip.
3. **End-to-end tests** for `examples/` with expected program output.
4. **Hash stability**: a test ensures the same def always produces the same
   hash.
5. **CI pin** of the outputs in `tests/expected/`.
6. **Rustdoc cleanliness**: `cargo doc --no-deps` runs warning-free.
   Maintained by the `ailang-docwriter` agent (Iter 13d onward); fixing a
   rustdoc warning is part of the iter that introduced it, not a follow-up.

## What is not (yet) supported

Snapshot of the boundary at the end of Iter 13. Items move out of this list
as iterations land; the JOURNAL records the exact iteration.

- No effect handlers — only the built-in IO and Diverge ops.
- No refinements / SMT escalation.
- No HM inference inside bodies. Top-level def types are explicit;
  polymorphism is opt-in via `Type::Forall { vars, body }`. Inside
  a body, lambdas check monomorphically against their declared type.
- Polymorphic fns must be **directly called** at the use site.
  Passing a polymorphic fn as a value (`let f = id in f(42)`) is
  not yet supported — it would need one closure-pair global per
  instantiation, deferred.
- No higher-rank polymorphism. Passing a polymorphic fn to another
  polymorphic fn (`apply(id, 42)`) is not supported.
- No cross-module ADTs. ADTs are local to a module; ctor names must be
  unique within their module but may collide across modules.
- No visibility rules in imports. Every top-level def of an imported module
  is reachable; there is no `pub` / `priv`.
- No GC. ADT boxes, lambda envs, and closure pairs all leak. Acceptable
  for current example programs; required before any longer-running
  program.

What **is** supported (and used as the smoke test for the pipeline):

- Int, Bool, Unit, **Str** as primitive types.
- `if`, `let`, function calls, recursion.
- Effects on function signatures, with `do op(args)` for direct effect
  ops (`io/print_int`, `io/print_bool`, `io/print_str`).
- **ADTs + flat pattern matching** (Iter 3). Sub-patterns of a Ctor
  pattern are restricted to `Var` / `Wild`.
- **Imports + qualified cross-module references** via dotted names
  (Iter 5).
- **First-class function references** (Iter 7). A top-level fn name (or
  qualified `prefix.def`) used as a `Term::Var` is a fn-value.
- **Anonymous lambdas with capture** (Iter 8). `Term::Lam` constructs a
  closure that captures any free variables of its body from the
  enclosing scope. All fn-values share a single ABI: a `ptr` to a
  closure pair `{ thunk_ptr, env_ptr }`. Top-level fns get an auto-
  generated adapter and a static closure pair (env = null) so they
  remain passable as values without heap overhead.
- **Polymorphism via `Type::Forall`** at top-level def types (Iter 12).
  Use sites instantiate fresh metavars; unification pins them against
  the concrete types of the call args. Codegen monomorphises on
  demand: each unique instantiation emits a specialised LLVM fn
  mangled `@ail_<m>_<def>__<descriptor>` (e.g. `id__I` for `id` at
  `Int`, `apply__I_I` for `apply` at `(Int, Int)`).
- **Parameterised ADTs** (Iter 13). `TypeDef.vars: Vec<String>`
  declares type parameters; `Type::Con.args: Vec<Type>` carries the
  type arguments at use sites. Both fields default to empty and are
  skipped during serialization, so canonical-JSON hashes of every
  pre-13a definition stay bit-identical (regression test in
  `crates/ailang-core/src/hash.rs`). Ctor and match codegen stay
  inline at every use site — there is no specialised ADT symbol —
  but LLVM field types are derived per use site by substituting
  through `cdef.ail_fields`. The substitution is read off the call's
  arg types (ctor) or the scrutinee's `Type::Con.args` (match). An
  unresolved `Type::Var` reaching `llvm_type` is a hard error
  rather than a silent fallback to `ptr`.

Pipeline regression smoke tests:

- `examples/sum.ail.json` → prints 55 (recursion, arithmetic).
- `examples/list.ail.json` → prints 42 (ADTs + match).
- `examples/hof.ail.json` → prints 42 (first-class fn-refs, indirect call).
- `examples/closure.ail.json` → prints 42 (lambda capturing a let-bound var).
- `examples/list_map.ail.json` → prints 2/4/6 (ADTs + closure + recursive
  HOF + IO; the dogfood smoke test).
- `examples/sort.ail.json` → prints sorted [3,1,4,1,5,9,2,6,5,3,5]
  one-per-line (insertion sort over an 11-element list).
- `examples/poly_id.ail.json` → prints 42 then "true" (polymorphic
  identity at `Int` and `Bool`; two specialised fns emitted).
- `examples/poly_apply.ail.json` → prints 42 (polymorphic `apply`
  with a fn-typed parameter; `apply(succ, 41)`).
- `examples/box.ail.json` → prints 42 (parameterised ADT round-
  trip: `MkBox(42)` constructed, then projected by a polymorphic
  `unbox : forall a. (Box<a>) -> a` and printed).
- `examples/maybe_int.ail.json` → prints 7 then 99 (pattern match
  over `Maybe<Int>`: `or_else(Some(7), 99)` then
  `or_else(None, 99)`).