flan/NEXT.md

# Where this is

## Start here — next session

**Branch `dev-loop`, 199 commits, working tree clean, `dune test` green.**

**`NEXT.md` is what is left. [`BUILT.md`](BUILT.md) is why the existing parts are the shape they are** — the reload
primitive, cells, the agent, the session, the daemon, the Emacs client, conditions, the FFI shim, the layout, and the
order it all got built in. This file was half build log until it was split; do not let it become one again. When a
track here finishes, its explanation moves there and its entry here goes away.

The dev loop works end to end: `flan dev program.flan`, then `C-c C-c`, `C-x C-e` and `C-c C-r` in Emacs against the
running process.

**Conditions are three steps of four.** `(error c)` is the diverging variant — a handler that returns normally has not
answered it, so only a transfer gets past. The break loop is in, editor half included: an unhandled `error` stops the
program on the frame that erred, the daemon annotates every reply with `:stopped`/`:condition`, and `C-c C-b` lists the
restarts and resumes into the choice. A restart is chosen **by position**, off a snapshot taken when the break was
entered, because a name resolves to the innermost frame offering it and the stopped thread's stack does not hold still.
Restarts below the evaluation a break is inside are listed, marked, and refused with the reason.

Still open from §3, each refused by name today: **restarts with parameters** (argument marshalling plus a runtime arity
check), and **`handler-case`**, which §"What this does not settle" leaves open as possibly a macro over `handler-bind`
plus a transfer. **`find-restart` and `compute-restarts` are blocked on a type, not on effort** — §4 gives them
`(Option Restart)` and a list, and there is no `Restart` type and no list to return one in. The minibuffer prompt never
needed them; it reads the snapshot over the agent's socket. And a `restart-case` clause should carry a **report
string** before any of this: `use-placeholder` is what `invoke-restart` needs, not what a person reading a list needs.

Read SBCL for what restarts should *mean* and ignore how it moves control: it transfers with `block`/`return-from`,
which §6 rules out.

### Landed 2026-09-12 — six tracks, one session

Six agents in parallel worktrees. Kept short on purpose; the reasoning that outlives the change is in `BUILT.md` or in
the commit that made it.

1. **`nth` removed**, an alias of `at` that was asymmetric — `check.ml` aliased them but `parse.ml` and
   `place_of_expr` matched only `at`, so `(set (nth a i) x)` and `(addr (nth a i))` were refused while the `at` forms
   worked.
2. **`println` and `print`**, compiler-provided and structural. `Session.render` was already the compile-time walk
   plan.org asks for; it moved to `lib/render.ml` parameterised on an emitter and a slot allocator, so the REPL and
   stdout share one copy. Found doing it: `field_addr` in `emit.ml` accepted only `Types.Named`, so a field of an
   `Option` threw at emit time and **the walk's Option arm had never run** — the inspector would have failed on the
   first `(Option T)` pointed at it. prelude.ml's claim that this had to wait for milestone 5 and generics was wrong,
   and is gone: a printer selected per *concrete* type has nothing to dispatch on and no type variable in it.
3. **`restart-at`** — a restart is taken by position now. See "Start here".
4. **Names in DWARF.** `Tast.fn` carries `snames` beside `slots`, so a let-bound local is its own name under lldb
   instead of `s0`; a slot the compiler invented keeps `s<index>`, because inventing a name puts a variable in the
   debugger that is not in the file. Shadowing had to be decided rather than assumed: every `!DILocalVariable` is
   scoped to the subprogram — the typed IR has no block structure to build a `!DILexicalBlock` from — so two slots
   called `v` left lldb answering `p v` with the outer one while the body computed with the inner, and not listing the
   inner at all. A repeat gets a `~2` suffix, unspellable in source. That is a way of not lying rather than a way of
   being right; see "One line away". Also `flan dev --debug`, one flag for host and every redefinition module, off by
   default because a debug build is an `-O0` build.
5. **Ten raylib core examples** in `examples/`, plus seven bindings and the colour palette. The gap list they produced
   is under "Unblocked now, and ranked"; the top item, that no number could reach `draw-text`, is fixed — `(string b)`
   reinterprets a `[u8]` as a `string`, which costs no instructions because they are already the same 16 bytes.

6. **The `print-*` family is gone.** `print` and `println` are the whole printing surface; ~500 call sites across 47
   files rewrote, and `web/index.html` gained a `#printing` section, the first documentation either has had. Two pinned
   outputs moved and both are corrections: `sand-headless`'s hash is `15595743031174623232` rather than
   `-2851001042534928384` — the same 64 bits, printed unsigned now that `hash-grid`'s `u64` no longer goes through an
   `(i64 …)` cast — and a trap column shifted because the call it names got shorter.

### Landed — the runtime under a sanitizer

`--sanitize` is a build flag beside `--debug`; `dune build --root . @sanitize` builds twenty-eight programs twice, plain
and sanitized, and compares output and exit status. Its own alias and not `dune test`, because the sweep is about nine
minutes. The checked sweep is **clean**. How ASan and UBSan reach a language whose IR is written by hand, and why the
flag does not force `-O0` when `--debug` does, is in [`BUILT.md`](BUILT.md).

Two defects came out of it, both found by reading rather than by the tools, both fixed with a regression case:
`flan_bytes_to_i64`/`flan_bytes_to_f64` clamped a slice length with `(size_t)n` and so read 63 or 511 bytes off the end
of a negative-length slice; and the three `snprintf` shims published snprintf's return as a slice length, which is what
it *would* have written.

**What is left, and it is most of what the sweep was meant to settle:**

1. **UBSan sees no Flan code and no flag changes that.** Its checks are branches clang's C frontend emits inline, not a
   pass, so shift UB (`(<< 1 32)`, see Sharp edges), alignment, and the f32→i32 cast on NaN or an infinity — the things
   `floor-f32` guards by hand and nothing else does — are unreached. Either `Emit` grows those checks behind the flag,
   which is a compiler feature of the same shape the bounds checks already have, or they belong to the checker. Not
   decided. `test_sanitize` pins the current answer with a control that must *not* report, so a future clang changing
   this is a test failure rather than a discovery.
2. **Four named buffers got no evidence at all.** The 4K result cap, the dev registry overflow guard,
   `SNAP_MAX`/`SNAP_NAMES` and `condition_name[128]` are on the daemon and agent paths, which need a socket and are not
   in the corpus. Their guards were read and are correct; that is reading, not testing. `escaped[ESCAPE_MAX]` is the one
   that *is* covered, because `println.flan` drives a 1100-character string through it on purpose — 1019 bytes out
   against a worst case of 1021 into 1024. `scratch[SCRATCH]` never sees more than 20 characters of 64.
3. **Valgrind over the headless corpus, not done.** ASan does not see uninitialised reads, which is where `zeroed` and
   struct padding live. MSan is out: it needs every dependency instrumented and raylib settles that.

Two things the sweep structurally cannot cover: raylib and libm are uninstrumented, so the windowed examples are noise;
and a redefinition module is built by `llc` and `ld` rather than clang, so the reload path carries no instrumentation
whatever the flag says.

### Managed classes are planned. Do not start them.

plan.org grew a `class` facility beside `struct`: identity, runtime shape metadata, an implementation-defined
representation, generic-function dispatch, and live schema change with an explicit migration at a frame boundary. Its
own last line is the rule — nothing until ordinary `struct`, `Handle` and reload semantics are working. It is here so
that a session reading plan.org cold does not take it as the next task. Three things found while reviewing it, none of
them in plan.org yet:

- **A generic function is a cell.** "A later module can add `(defmethod draw ((e Enemy)) ...)` without editing the
original" means every compiled call site of `draw` has to find the new method — which is the problem the indirection
cells already solve. A generic function is a cell whose body is a dispatch table and a reload extends the table. The
expensive half of classes is therefore already built and tested.
- **The pool is not one storage option among three.** `migrate-instances` has to *enumerate* live instances. A pool
behind generational `(Handle T)` gives that by construction; a world arena and an owned region do not obviously.
plan.org presents the three as a free choice and they are not.
- **`Enemy@1` has to stay resolvable** for `migrate` to dispatch on it, so the session retains every layout version's
metadata for as long as any instance holds it. Same rule as "nothing is ever `dlclose`d", and worth stating as one.

### Open: can a condition be a class?

Unanswered, and it wants answering before `handler-case`, because it decides whether handler matching has one path or
two.

It would buy the thing conditions most lack: a **hierarchy**. §1 says flatly there is none, which is why nothing can say
"any condition" — no catch-all handler and nothing for a break loop to match on. Class inheritance gives it.

Three costs, one serious:

- **Signalling would allocate.** A struct condition is a stack value and `signal` takes its address; a class instance
needs a pool slot at the signal site. That is the failure path, sometimes the hot path, and sometimes the thing that
failed is allocation itself. plan.org also says no implicit allocation anywhere in the core.
- **§5's lifetime inverts.** Today the condition dies with the signalling frame and a handler that keeps it copies,
which is free for a value struct. A class instance survives the transfer — nicer, but now something owns and frees it.
- **Layout versions meet handler frames.** A struct condition cannot change layout; it is refused. A class can, and then
a frame pushed against `MyError@1` is on the stack while the signaller builds `MyError@2`.

The shape that probably wins is both: a struct condition stays exactly what it is — no allocation, matched by name hash,
dies with the frame — and a class condition is allocated, survives, and matches by walking its class chain. That is two
matching paths, which is the same bill the struct/class split already signs, so it is consistent rather than a new cost.
Either way it is an amendment to a **frozen** `spec-conditions.md`, not a gap in it.


**The dev loop is closed.** `C-c C-c` in Emacs recompiles the top-level form at point and installs it in a running
program, at that program's next frame boundary. Verified against sand: an unsaved buffer edit to `game-draw`, and 240
consecutive frames drew it.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are done — see *The reload primitive* in `BUILT.md`. A list of top-level forms can be recompiled and installed
into a running process; call sites compiled before they existed follow them, and a `defn` or `defvar` the process was
never built with can be added and then redefined again. That is the whole of `C-c C-c`, minus an editor: sand.flan takes
a redefinition over a socket and installs it between frames.

What is left is the *session* — something that holds the checker environment between evaluations, tracks which names the
running process was built with, and speaks a protocol an editor can talk to.

Milestone 4 is done: **sand.flan builds, links raylib and runs**, and its simulation has a headless acceptance case that
runs on the `dune test` path at `-O0` and `-O2`. Milestones 2 and 3 are behind it (`calc-me.flan` compiles and runs; the
interpreter was dropped — open decision #7, settled — see "Why there is no interpreter" in `BUILT.md`).

```
reader ✅ → parse ✅ → load ✅ → check ✅ → emit ✅ → clang ✅
```

| File | What it does |
|---|---|
| `lib/loc.ml` | source locations + `Loc.Error`, the frontend's one exception |
| `lib/form.ml` | reader output: `Sym Kw Int Float Str Byte List Vec Map` |
| `lib/reader.ml` | hand-written S-expression reader, no menhir/ocamllex |
| `lib/ast.ml` | AST: `texpr`, `expr`, `place`, `pattern`, `decl` |
| `lib/parse.ml` | forms → AST; special forms, desugaring, declarations |
| `lib/load.ml` | **imports: a package directory → qualified declarations** |
| `lib/types.ml` | resolved types; structural equality, `Never` fits anywhere |
| `lib/tast.ml` | the typed IR the backend consumes |
| `lib/check.ml` | AST → typed IR; two passes, bidirectional |
| `lib/session.ml` | **a live program: what the process was built from, plus every change since** |
| `lib/wire.ml` | **the editor protocol: one s-expression per message, length framed** |
| `lib/dev.ml` | **`flan dev`: a session, the program running beside it, and a socket** |
| `lib/prelude.ml` | printers + `rand-f32`, written in Flan |
| `lib/emit.ml` | typed IR → LLVM IR text |
| `lib/build.ml` | `.ll` + the shim + the packages' C → clang → executable |
| `runtime/flan_rt.c` | the host ABI: argv, stdout, exit, 4 conversions |
| `runtime/flan_dev.c` | **dev only: the by-name registry a run-time-new name needs** |
| `lib/shim.ml` | **`declare-c` -> the generated C that flattens a struct crossing** |
| `vendor/raylib/` | **the raylib package: `raylib.flan` and `link`, and no C at all** |
| `vendor/agent/` | **the dev agent: a socket, a loader thread, install at a frame boundary** |
| `emacs/` | **`flan-mode.el`, `flan-dev.el`, `flan-repl.el`: the editor half of the dev loop** |
| `bin/main.ml` | `flan read \| parse \| check \| emit \| shim \| build \| run \| reload \| dev` |
| `test/test_flan.ml` | reader, parser and checker |
| `test/test_acceptance.ml` | expression/result pairs + whole programs + the traps |
| `test/test_reload.ml` | **the reload primitive: recompile one function, load it, call it** |
| `test/test_agent.ml` | **a running program taking a redefinition over a socket** |
| `test/test_session.ml` | **what a running process cannot be told, and recovering from a typo** |
| `test/test_dev.ml` | **the daemon, driven the way an editor drives it** |
| `test/test_repl.ml` | **`C-x C-e`: an expression evaluated inside a running program** |
| `test/programs/conditions.flan` | **`handler-bind` and `signal`, the accumulation case** |
| `conditions.org` | **a cheatsheet for driving conditions: what works, the exact refusals, the gotchas** |
| `conditions-play.flan` | **a program to poke at them with, built to be attached to by `flan dev`** |
| `test/programs/restarts.flan` | **`restart-case` and `invoke-restart`: the transfer, across two frames** |
| `test/test_emacs.ml` | **the client, driven against a real daemon and a real program** |
| `test/reload_host.c` | the C host that loads and installs two rebuilds, in one process |
| `test/wasm-run.mjs` | **a WASI host in twenty lines of `node:wasi`, so the table can run a wasm32 build** |

```
$ flan run calc-me.flan "1 + 2 * (3 - 0.5) / 2"
3.5
$ flan run test/programs/sand-headless.flan
15595743031174623232
$ flan run sand.flan                      # a window, 120 fps, hold space
```

## Blocked and unfinished

Everything below was found, decided or half-built and then stopped. Each says what blocks it. Nothing here is a
vague intention — if it is listed, someone has already established it is real.

### Unblocked now, and ranked

**0. Signature generations and stale-caller warnings — milestone 7's unfinished half.**
Promoted here on the author's correction, and `session.ml:146` already says the same thing at the refusal itself. A
changed signature is refused today and **that is a placeholder, not the design**. plan.org's open decision #6 says what
should happen: a signature change makes a new version of the function, new callers resolve it, existing callers and any
stored `Fn` value stay safely on the old one, and the session *warns* at each tracked stale caller site. Milestone 7
names it outright — "signature generations and stale-caller warnings".

**The thesis of this project is that you never restart the program.** Every refusal that ends in "restart to change it"
is a hole in that, and this is the biggest one. It needs three things that do not exist: function versions, a
trampoline per version, and caller tracking good enough to name the sites. The cell already gives the indirection; what
is missing is that a cell holds one bare pointer with no signature, so there is nowhere to put a second version.

A changed **struct layout** is the genuinely hard case and plan.org still specifies it as a rejection — storage already
allocated has the old shape and a new body reads its fields at the wrong offsets. Managed classes are the planned way
through, with an explicit migration at a frame boundary. Do not conflate the two: one is unbuilt, the other is decided.


**From porting ten raylib examples** — the first code the language was pushed by that it was not designed around.
Ranked by how often they were hit, top two first because they are walls rather than conveniences:

1. ~~No number reaches `draw-text`.~~ **Fixed** by `(string b)`.
2. ~~An enum parameter cannot be driven by a loop variable.~~ **Fixed** by explicit conversions in both directions:
   `(i32 k)` takes an enum to its integer, `(GamepadAxis n)` takes an integer to an enum. Neither is an instruction —
   an enum is an i32 at run time and `emit.ml`'s `cast` already reduced one to that before choosing an opcode — so the
   change is a guard in `check.ml`'s cast arm and nothing in the backend. The rule the refusals came from is
   deliberately *not* relaxed: a bare integer still does not fit an enum parameter, so `:spcae` is still an error at
   the call site. The rule was "an integer must not arrive silently", and a written `(GamepadAxis i)` is not silent.
   The other escape stays closed too — one `declare-c` per C function — and no longer needs to be open.
   - **A value that is no declared member is allowed**, deliberately. raylib's gesture is a bitfield and an OR of
     flags is a legal `Gesture` that is no single member; and `session.ml`'s printer already falls through to the
     number for an out-of-range enum, on purpose, so refusing to construct one while agreeing to print it would be
     incoherent. An `Option` would make every site unwrap for no safety bought, and a literal-only refusal would
     catch nothing, because the bitfield case is a run-time value.
   - **Only an integer converts *to* an enum.** Not a float, and not another enum — a cross-enum hop goes through
     `(i32 x)` so both ends are written down. Enum → any numeric is always allowed: lossless to i32 by construction,
     and a narrower target truncates by the rule every int→int cast already follows.
   - **The comparisons needed nothing else.** `(> (i32 g) 255)` checks because `binary` takes the non-literal side
     first; `binary` was deliberately left ignorant of enums, since teaching it would be the implicit conversion this
     avoids.
   - **A bit-set type later builds on this rather than replacing it.** It would be its own type with its own
     operations and would still want a named escape to the underlying integer for the FFI, spelled the same way. If
     `Gesture` becomes one, the `(i32 g)` calls stay valid and only the range tests migrate to a membership test.
   - One parse fix came with it: `defenum` names were not in `parse.ml`'s type set, so a local enum could not be a
     function's return type. They are in it now under a key of their own, admitted as a bare symbol and never as a
     list head — because `(Key n)` is a *value* now, and putting `Key` in `types` would make a body starting with one
     be eaten as a return type.
3. **`break` is not implemented.** Declined deliberately rather than built — see below.
4. **A `let` binding takes no type annotation**, so a fixed array is either a top-level `defvar` or a literal with
   every element spelled out. `(let [pts [4 rl/Vector2]] …)` parses as a two-element array literal and fails with
   *unknown name rl/Vector2*. Cost: 32 hand-written `Vector2`s in one example. **Looked at and stopped — it is a
   grammar question, not a missing feature.** Everything under the surface is already there: `Ast.binding` carries a
   `bty`, `load.ml` renames through it, and `check.ml:723` consumes it as the `want` for the value. Only the way it
   is written is open, and the parser says so where it refuses (`parse.ml:366`): `let` is a flat list of pairs, so it
   cannot disambiguate by *count* the way `defvar` and `defconst` do — those read `[n t v]` as three arguments to a
   form, and there is no such boundary between one pair and the next. Three surfaces, in the order they are worth
   considering:
   - **`(zeroed [4 rl/Vector2])` — `zeroed` takes its type as an argument.** Recommended. It is one extra branch in
     the arity-0 `zeroed` case in `check.ml`, no parser change, no ambiguity, and it answers the actual complaint,
     which is not "locals cannot be annotated" but "there is nothing here to infer *from*". It also reads as what it
     does: the value is a zeroed thing of that type, not a name that has been told what it is.
   - **A marker between the name and the type**, `(let [pts :- [4 rl/Vector2] …] …)` or similar. Unambiguous, and it
     buys a general annotation rather than one form's escape hatch. The cost is a new piece of syntax in the binding
     vector, which is the one place this language has kept looking exactly like Clojure's.
   - **Bare `(let [pts [4 rl/Vector2] …])`.** The obvious spelling and the one that cannot work: `[4 rl/Vector2]` is
     a well-formed two-element array literal, and telling the two apart needs types in the parser, which there are
     none of by design.
   Note that plan.org's rule is "annotate function signatures, infer locals", so the general annotation is a
   deliberate absence and not an oversight — which is the other reason the `zeroed` route is the smaller answer.
5. ~~**Arithmetic is strictly binary** — *+ takes 2 arguments, given 5*.~~ **Fixed.** `+ - * /`, `min`/`max` and
   `bit-and`/`bit-or`/`bit-xor` fold left over two operands or more. `%` and the shifts stay at two, and one operand
   is refused with the form to write instead — there is no unary minus and no reciprocal.
6. ~~**No `sin`/`cos`/`abs` for floats.**~~ **Fixed.** `sin-f32` and `cos-f32` are `declare`s in the prelude now,
   with the caveat written beside them: IEEE-754 makes `sqrt` correctly rounded and requires nothing of the kind for
   `sinf`, so these are the one place in the prelude where native and wasm32 may disagree bit for bit. Float `abs` is
   not wrapped, for the reason integer `abs` is not — it is `(max x (- 0.0 x))` over two builtins.

**A `string` cannot be returned from C at all**, which is what makes `GetGamepadName` unbindable: *a string only
crosses as a parameter — a C function that returns one returns something Flan has no owner for*. Same rule refuses
`TextFormat`, which is also variadic and so has no honest signature.

**The negative result is worth as much.** None of the gaps expected blocked anything — no generics, no allocator, no
`Vec`/`Map`, no escaping closures, and function-scoped `defer` never came up. Input-and-draw over fixed-size state is
the shape the language already has. Three constructs unexercised anywhere else in the repo worked first try: a fixed
array with a struct element, a 2-D struct array, and `[N string]` as both `defconst` and mutable `defvar`.

### `break`, and why it was not built

Settled, so the next attempt is cheap rather than a rediscovery:

- **`dotimes` gets it free** — it desugars to `Tast.While`, so one implementation covers both loop forms.
- **`defer` is a non-question.** It is function-scoped, `break` does not leave the function, nothing fires. No refusal
  needed and no interaction to design.
- **Type it `Never`**, as `exit` and `return` already are.
- **`pads` is the structural model.** `emit_while` already makes an `endloop` label; break is a push/pop of that around
  the body plus a `br`. `return` is a direct terminator with no context threading, so there is nothing else to mirror.

What stopped it, and neither is small:

- **`check.ml`'s `in_frames` rule does not extend.** It refuses `return` inside `handler-bind`/`restart-case` because
  those frames are popped on the way out, and that refusal is blanket because `return` *always* crosses. `break`
  crosses only sometimes — a loop wholly inside a `restart-case` body has a legitimate local break — so the precedent
  has to be replaced by a loop-depth-relative-to-frame-entry rule nobody has ruled on.
- **`continue` forces a `Tast.While` signature change.** `check_dotimes` folds the step into the body as
  `While (cond, body @ [step])`, so a `continue` branching to the header skips the increment and hangs. It needs a
  latch — `While of expr * expr list * expr list` — across `check.ml` and `emit.ml`. plan.org settles break and
  continue as one item and `parse.ml` refuses them in one case, so building break against today's `While` is exactly
  the thing that would have to be undone.

plan.org's single line on it (831) names a `for` the language does not have and gives no mechanism.


1. **Allocators, then `Vec` and `Map`.** The critical path, and the only thing standing between this and writing a
   game. **`Vec` does not need generics** — that was wrong and is worth un-learning: Odin's containers are compiler
   builtins over a *type-erased* runtime (`base/runtime/dynamic_array_internal.odin`), where `$T` appears only in thin
   wrappers producing `size_of`/`align_of` at the call site, and per-key hash and equality are compiler-emitted
   procedures passed as a runtime argument (`src/llvm_backend.cpp`, `Map_Info`). That is exactly what
   `spec-memory.md` already specifies. Before writing any of it, settle the four things the Odin and Carp studies
   converged on, because all four are cheap now and expensive after:
   - **When is storage released?** `spec-memory.md` never says. Odin's answer is `defer delete`, which Flan cannot
     express — `defer` is function-scoped and refused in a `let`, a loop or a branch. Carp's answer is scope-end
     frees, which it then could not reconcile with arenas and so has no allocator at all.
   - **A `drop` hook** for a struct owning something that is not memory — a `Texture2D`, a socket, a file handle. Carp
     shipped `delete` and then had to add a separate `drop` interface (`docs/Drop.md`). The hard part is ours alone:
     what runs `drop` when the arena resets underneath the value.
   - **`alignment`** appears nowhere in the design. Every Odin allocation carries it, and `#soa` and component-wise
     fixed arrays want 16-byte alignment.
   - **Allocation failure.** Unspecified. Odin returns an ignorable error, so a failed `append` silently appends
     nothing. Flan has a better answer available for free: a `StorageExhausted` condition with a `retry` restart.
     Decide which, because `push`/`put`/`clone`'s signatures depend on it.

2. **Typed restarts — `(use-value [v T] v)`.** The author's third TODO, and the most-wanted thing across every
   comparative study. SBCL's report: restarts without parameters lose "the entire supply-a-value half of the standard
   vocabulary", because `use-value` and `store-value` are the only two whose answer comes from outside the program.
   Needs argument marshalling in `emit.ml` and §3's arity check in `check.ml`; both files are free now. The leverage
   SBCL lacks: `eval` already compiles and runs an expression inside the live program, and the daemon already holds
   the struct layouts, so "ask the human, type-check the answer, hand it over" is a short hop.

3. **`handler-case`.** Not a convenience — it is the fix for the loudest gotcha in `conditions.org`. A handler closes
   over nothing *only because* a `handler-bind` clause runs at the signal point; a `handler-case` clause runs in the
   establishing frame, which is ordinary in-frame code exactly like a `restart-case` clause. SBCL's is `handler-bind`
   plus a transfer and nothing more (`src/code/error.lisp:196-268`). Every piece exists.

### Bugs found and not yet fixed

- ~~`web/examples/breakdemo.out` is stale and `check.sh` fails on it.~~ **Fixed.** Commit `4a6a8fa` made the break
  banner number its restarts and the `.out` was never repinned. Nothing had to drive the socket in the end:
  `check.sh` already builds this one `--dev` and runs it under `timeout 5`, keeping what it printed before it
  stopped, so the repin was the `.out` plus the two prose copies of the banner — `web/index.html` and `BUILT.md` —
  and a sentence on the page saying what the numbers are for, since a restart is taken by position.

- ~~A shadowed restart is offered and cannot be taken.~~ **Fixed.** A restart is taken by *position* now:
  `(:op "restart-at" :index N :name NAME)` on the daemon, `restart-at N NAME` on the agent, and a numbered
  `completing-read` in `C-c C-b`. `:name` is a receipt, not the lookup — it is checked against the name the snapshot
  holds at that index and refused if the two have drifted, so a bare integer can be wrong out loud. `restart <name>`
  survives for a raw socket and is now defined as `restart-at` on the first index offering the name, so the two verbs
  cannot disagree. `break.flan` grew the shadowed pair and asserts 900, which is the only value in that file no by-name
  lookup can produce. The C&R buffer still marks the shadowed row by name and could now offer it instead — small, and
  not done here.

- ~~A restart chosen at a break inside a thunk is accepted, announced, and silently not taken.~~ **Fixed by refusing
  it, with the reason.** Not by the depth NEXT.md proposed: recording the restart-stack depth on *entering the break
  loop* counts the frames a `restart-case` inside the thunk pushed before it erred, and those are above the boundary
  and work. The boundary is where it is made — `restart_floor` is set to `flan_restart_count()` around `j.call()` in
  `flan_agent_poll`, saved and restored so thunks nest — and the outermost `floor` entries of the snapshot are marked
  unreachable. They are listed and marked rather than hidden, refused by the listener before the reply, and carried to
  the editor as `:unreachable (2 3)`. `test_dev.ml` breaks a stopped program a second time from inside `C-x C-e` and
  asserts both halves: index 2 refused, index 0 taken.

- ~~Restart names are served from a stack that is being mutated.~~ **Fixed, and it was a precondition rather than a
  separate bug.** Index-based resume is wrong by construction against a moving stack: unlike a name, an index carries
  no evidence of what it meant. The agent copies the list on entering `break_loop` — names into its own buffer, frames
  as the addresses a transfer carries — one snapshot per nested break, and every verb answers from it. Caps are
  `SNAP_MAX` 64 restarts and `SNAP_NAMES` 4096 bytes; past either, the listing says how many it did not show. Neither
  cap has a test, same blind spot as the 4K result cap below.

- **A snapshot generation has no test, and the window is a race.** A choice is validated against the snapshot on top
  when the request arrives and resolved against the snapshot on top when the game thread next looks. Between those,
  an evaluation the break loop is running can error and push a break of its own, whose loop would otherwise reach
  [chosen_ready] first and take *its* index 2 for the one someone chose from the outer list. Each snapshot now carries
  a generation, a choice is stamped with the one it was validated against, and a loop claims only what is addressed to
  it — a mismatch is left set rather than discarded, because the listener already answered ok for it. Depth would not
  do: an outer break resuming and a new one starting reuses the number. None of this is tested, because arranging the
  window means landing a request inside a two-millisecond poll from outside the process. It wants a hook the test can
  drive, not a sleep.

- **The job ring has no fullness check**, and the comment describing its overflow is wrong. `publish` never consults
  `tail`; past `QUEUE` entries it overwrites the slot the consumer is reading, and `job` is 24 non-atomic bytes.
  Reachable from a program that goes a long time between `agent/poll` calls.
- **`flan_dev_result_get` is not the seqlock its comment claims** — it reads the generation first, then a non-atomic
  length, then returns a bare pointer the caller sends later.
- Smaller: `exit(134)` from the break loop with the listener inside `dlopen`; a `dlopen` handle leaked when a module
  has no installer.
- **`(A {:x 1})` on a union variant says "unknown struct A"** rather than the union refusal `check_struct` plainly
  intends — `env` has no table of variant names. A diagnostics bug, not a backend death.

### Test blind spots, from a mutation pass

Sixty mutations, nineteen left the whole suite green. The severe cluster is closed (`cleanup.flan`,
`signedness.flan`); these are not:

- `Reach`'s walk of index expressions, `addr` places and `restart-case` clause bodies — each confirmed to prune a
  function a valid program calls, so the build fails to link.
- `flan_dev_global`'s size-change guard — the layout-drift check, with no test that retypes a global across a reload.
- A local shadowing an imported name is qualified anyway.
- The 4K result cap and the registry overflow guard have **no coverage at all**, rather than a missing assertion.
- The reader accepts an unknown string escape; `+5` stops being a number.
- And a warning: a reader mutation makes the suite **hang** rather than fail. A green run is not the only outcome to
  plan for in CI.

### Asked for by the editor lanes

- **`(:op "condition")` → the stopped program's condition, rendered.** Two steps: `break_loop` currently does
  `(void)condition;` and *discards the pointer*, so stash it beside `condition_name`; then the daemon builds a render
  thunk aimed at that address, which is `Session.render` rooted at a `Ptr` instead of an expression.
- **The type identity is settled, and it is the qualified name** — `layout` is in, see BUILT.md. `Load` qualifies
  every declaration at import, so the names in `Tast.structs` are a flat namespace where two packages' `Missing` are
  `a/Missing` and `b/Missing`; a bare name is refused with the candidates rather than resolved. `condition` inherits
  it for free: the string the break loop already reports *is* that name, because `Emit.struct_name_of` writes
  `Types.Named` into `flan_error`. It is still open for **locals**, where DWARF gives a name and the name a debugger
  reads is not qualified by anything.
- **`(:op "backtrace")` is blocked** on frame metadata — unlocked by the DWARF work, then a new agent verb. Locals are
  blocked twice: DWARF for the frame layout, *and* the pointer-rooted render thunk. Restart source locations and
  arity are blocked too — `flan_restart` carries `prev`, `name_id`, `name` and `namelen`, so both need a new field in
  the frame, which means the compiler emitting it.

### One line away

- **`match` over enums.** Fully desugarable, wanted, and blocked only by `Ast.pattern` needing a keyword case, which
  `load.ml` matches exhaustively.
- **`Build.executable` returns only `out`**, so the daemon recovers the host `.ll` by recomputing `Build.workdir ()`.
- **A `!DILexicalBlock` per `Let`.** Not one line, but the one thing left in the DWARF work: every `!DILocalVariable`
  is currently scoped to the subprogram, so inside `(let [v 22] …)` nested in `(let [v 11] …)` lldb still answers
  `p v` with **11**. The `~2` suffix makes both *visible*, which is not the same as making the answer right. It needs
  block structure the typed IR does not carry, and the `llvm.dbg.declare`s moved out of the entry block.

### Deferred with a reason

- **Writing through a string literal** — see Sharp edges. Needs provenance, which is open decision #3.
- **`cstring` as a type.** Odin has no `string → cstring` conversion at all; it pays the same copy our shim already
  makes. The one thing it buys is the *return* direction, and nothing in `vendor/raylib` returns a string.
- **`rune`.** Odin's is a 4-byte integer distinguished by a flag, so `i32` is the same thing. Non-ASCII text is
  blocked on font loading, not on the string layer — and fonts are now bound.
- **Macro expansion.** The reader and the declaration are in. Running a macro means compiling it and `dlopen`ing it
  into the compiler, which is the reload primitive pointed at ourselves — but a macro is `[Form] -> Form`, so `Form`
  has to be a Flan union whose layout the compiler and the loaded macro agree on, and union *values* are milestone 6.

### Documents that contradict the code

- **`plan.org`'s jank #947 citation is wrong in its mechanism.** jank does not relink (it calls through vars, which
  are already indirection cells) and never unloads (`remove_symbol` has no callers). The real cause was a
  process-teardown race. We are safe from the repro — because we compile out of process, not because of cells. A
  normative document citing the wrong mechanism protects the wrong invariant.
- **`plan.org` still lists open decision #7 as open** and the interpreter as a backend. It was settled the other way;
  `NEXT.md` records the consequences as "already applied" to `plan.org`, and they never were.
- **nREPL's `eval` does carry `file`, `line` and `column`** — jank reads all three. The choice of s-expressions still
  stands on its other grounds; the stated reason does not.

## Sharp edges

- **Two formatted numbers cannot be held at once.** `flan_i64_to_bytes`, `flan_f64_to_bytes` and `flan_u64_to_bytes`
  all write into one `static char scratch[64]` — "rendered text lives here until the next call", flan_rt.c:184 — and
  `(string b)` does not copy. So

  ```
  (let [a (string (i64->bytes 11))
        b (string (i64->bytes 22))]
    (print a) (print " ") (println b))     ; => 22 22
  ```

  `a` is 11 and prints 22. No crash and no diagnostic. This is not new — the `[u8]` already aliased — but a `string`
  reads as more value-like and invites exactly this. Format, draw, measure, then format the next one; `digits.flan`
  sequences itself strictly for this reason. `rl/draw-text` is safe because the shim's `flan_shim_cstr` copies out of
  ptr+len before the call.

- **Writing through a string literal is undefined, and the two build modes
  disagree about how.** `(let [s (bytes "Hi")] (set (at s 0) \h))` stores into
  a `private unnamed_addr constant`. At `-O0` that is a store to read-only
  memory and the program takes SIGSEGV; at `-O2` LLVM deletes it as undefined
  and the program prints `Hi` and exits 0. Same source, and which way it fails
  depends on a flag — the worst shape available, and worse than either outcome
  alone.

  Nothing refuses it. `bytes` turns a `string` into a `[u8]`, the language lets
  you write through a slice, and by then nothing records that the bytes came
  from a constant. The honest fix is provenance — knowing a slice's origin —
  which is plan.org open decision #3 and deliberately deferred. A cheaper one
  that is *not* a fix: emitting literals as mutable globals only moves which
  flag misbehaves, and costs their read-only placement.

  Found by the string lane while deciding whether `lower-ascii` should mutate
  in place. It ships the copying version for exactly this reason, and that is
  the rule to follow until provenance exists: **a function over a `string` must
  not write through it.**


Most of these are edges the language keeps and you should know about. Two — the top-level namespace and the shift count,
both found by review after milestone 4 — were bugs that reached LLVM or ran wrong, and are **fixed**; each says so. They
stay written down because each one is now a rule the checker enforces, and a later change could quietly drop it.

- **An index converts from a narrower integer and never from a wider one.** `(at colors current-color)` with a `u32`
index works — anything above 2³¹ truncates to a negative `i32` and the unsigned bounds check rejects it. An `i64` index
is refused with the reason: 2³²+5 truncates to 5 and would read the wrong element with no trap at all.
- **There is one top-level namespace, and `check.ml` now enforces it.** The environment's tables are per-kind — structs,
unions, aliases, enums, functions, externs and globals each have their own — so only a function was ever checked for a
duplicate. `(defn item …)` beside `(defvar item …)` type checked and then died in LLVM as `redefinition of function
'@flan.item'`, a message about an emitted symbol with no source location left, and two colliding *type* declarations
were not caught anywhere. One pass over `Ast.declared_name` now runs before every other collection pass and rejects the
second declaration of a name whatever kind either one is. `declared_name` lives in `ast.ml` because `Load` needs exactly
the same set — the names an import renames — and two copies of that list would drift.
- **A shift count is bounded, two different ways.** A shift by the operand's own width or more is *poison* in LLVM, not
a wrong number: `(defn main [] i32 (<< 1 32))` compiled at -O2 to a bare `retq`, returning an undefined value. A literal
count out of range is now rejected in `check.ml` — that is the typo case — and `emit.ml` masks a computed count to
`width - 1`, which is what the hardware does anyway and which LLVM folds away whenever the count is constant. The
prelude's rotate masks its own count; that is now redundant but harmless.
- **A `u64` literal is its 64-bit pattern**, so `0xcbf29ce484222325` is a real `u64` and not an error. The cost is that
a negative *decimal* literal is accepted as a `u64` too, because the reader records the value and not how it was
written. Narrower unsigned types keep the strict check, which is where a typo like `300` for a `u8` actually shows up.
- **A folded constant skips `check`.** `(defconst rows (/ h c))` is emitted from the folding pass's value, because a
global's initialiser has to be a compile-time constant and only that pass knows this one is. Its range check is
therefore its own call to `in_range`; there is a regression test.
- A `let` binding takes no type annotation, which is why `sand.flan` names its FNV constants instead of writing them
inline.
- `(defn f [] f65 0.0)` still says *unknown name* rather than *did you mean f64*: with a single body form the parser
cannot tell a return type from the first expression. Only the parameter position and `(Option …)` are unambiguous.

## Loose ends from milestone 4

None of them blocking: block-scoped `defer`; package visibility, so `rl/get-color-raw` is not callable; a package
importing a package; imported unions.

## Macros — the reader and the declaration are in, the expander is not

The front half landed. What exists:

- **The reader** reads `` `x ``, `~x` and `~@x` as `(quasiquote x)`, `(unquote x)` and `(unquote-splicing x)`, exactly
as `'x` reads as `(quote x)`. It stays dumb: it does not count nesting levels, does not know whether an unquote is
inside a quasiquote, and attaches no meaning to the three names. Clojure's spelling, not Common Lisp's, because a comma
is whitespace in `is_delimiter` and every binding vector in the corpus relies on that. Backtick and tilde are delimiters
now, so `a~b` is two things.
- **`parse.ml` refuses all four by name.** `quasiquote` and `gensym` say expansion is not wired up; `unquote` and
`unquote-splicing` say they mean nothing outside a quasiquote, which is a mistake rather than a missing feature.
`(defmacro name [params] body ...)` at the top level is checked for shape and *then* refused — a malformed defmacro and
an unimplemented one get different reasons, so the shape rule is enforced before the feature exists.

Nothing is stored. There is deliberately no macro table and no `Ast.Defmacro`, because a table nothing reads is a place
for a design to rot, and the storage shape is the expander author's first decision, not a decision to inherit.

### How the expander should work

**There is no interpreter** (see "Why there is no interpreter" in `BUILT.md`) and there is not going to be one, so running a macro at
compile time means *compiling it and loading it into the compiler*. That machinery already exists and is measured:
`Emit.redefinition` → `Build.shared` → `dlopen` is ~19ms end to end, with the load itself at 0.04ms (see "The reload
primitive"). A macro is that pipeline pointed at the compiler's own process instead of the program's.

The shape it wants:

1. **A macro is a function `[Form] -> Form`.** Its parameters are forms and its result is a form, which means `Form.t`
has to exist on the Flan side — a `defunion` mirroring `lib/form.ml`, in the prelude, plus constructors and accessors.
That is the real work, and it is bigger than the expander itself: the compiler and the compiled macro have to agree on
the *layout* of a `Form`, not merely its shape, so whatever the checker does for unions has to be exact here. Until
unions are values this cannot start — `check.ml` puts union values and `match` on a union at **milestone 6**, so that is
milestone 6 work landing before milestone 5's.
2. **Expansion runs over `Form`, before `Parse`.** Not a pass over `Ast`: there is no `Ast.Defmacro` and `Parse` refuses
`defmacro` outright, so an `Ast`-level pass would have nothing to work with. That refusal is not a dead end, it is the
ordering — the expander runs first and `Parse` never sees a macro call at all. It is also the Clojure ordering, and the
reason a macro expanding to a special form is ordinary rather than a special case.
3. **Order matters and files do not have one.** Top-level names in a package are order-independent everywhere else
(`declared_types`, the constant fixpoint in `check.ml`). Macros cannot be: a macro must be compiled and loaded before a
call to it is expanded. Either collect every `defmacro` in a pre-pass and compile them as one module, or require
definition-before-use for macros specifically and say so in the error. The pre-pass is better and matches how the rest
of the frontend already behaves.
4. **A macro's own body may call macros**, so the pre-pass is a fixpoint, not a single sweep, and a cycle has to be
detected and named rather than looping.
5. **`gensym` is a runtime function of the compiler**, called by the loaded macro while it runs. It needs a counter that
lives in the compiler process and a name that cannot collide with a reader-produced symbol — the usual trick is a
character no symbol may contain, and this reader now has two new ones it could reserve. Hygiene is settled (plan.org,
open decision 2): deliberately non-hygienic, Common Lisp/Clojure style, explicit `gensym`, no `macrolet` until a
concrete use case appears.
6. **Quasiquote itself is a macro-shaped desugaring**, not a compiler feature: `` `(a ~b) `` becomes list-construction
over quoted pieces, with `~@` splicing. Written once, in the expander, over `Form`.

The four files this touches — `build.ml`, `check.ml`, `emit.ml`, `load.ml` — were owned by other lanes when the front
half landed, which is the only reason the expander is not here too.

### What would tell you it works

`when`, `unless`, `until`, `cond` and `dotimes` are special forms in `parse.ml` today, and plan.org milestone 5 says
they are special forms *only until macros land*. Moving one of them out of the compiler and into the prelude as a
`defmacro`, with the existing tests unchanged and still green, is the exit criterion — it proves expansion, quasiquote,
`gensym` and the ordering pre-pass at once, against a test suite written before any of them existed.

## Watch for

The rule that caught the two misparse bugs applies unchanged: **anything that binds a name, alters control flow, or is
not yet implemented must be recognised explicitly and rejected if unsupported.** `check.ml` rejects `Vec`, `Map`,
`Result`/`try`, union values, closures, quoted symbols, generics and function values *by name*, each with the milestone
it belongs to; `load.ml` rejects the package shapes it does not handle; and the FFI boundary rejects an aggregate. The
tests assert on the reason, not just on the failure.

## Untracked on purpose

`calc-me` and `sand`, the executables `flan build` drops beside their sources, are now in `.gitignore` — anchored
(`/calc-me`, `/sand`) so the patterns cannot match anything nested.

`old-ocaml/` — the pre-rewrite menhir/ocamllex frontend, kept as reference and excluded from the build by the root
`dune` file. Its contents are also in git history at `2c232dd`.