Beagle

Beagle is an independent statically typed Lisp derived from Clojure.

Derived: Clojure's vocabulary and structural authoring model — its form library, s-expressions, data literals, defn/let/destructuring/threading ergonomics. Independent: types, effects, execution, and memory/data model. Beagle's source and the checked AST are authoritative; Store is optional durable tooling, not a second language authority.

The primary hosted profiles are Clojure, JavaScript, and Nix. They share one parser, checker, canonicalizer, and diagnostic path and emit idiomatic source for their declared runtime. Native Core is an experimental system-layer path: bare .bgl freezes a checked native program before an explicitly selected C17, QBE, or C17/WASI Wasm bootstrap materializer. It is not a hosted profile.

Beagle Store is an optional in-repo engine for recursive Terms and Triples, durable occurrence history, queries and indexes, provenance records, and cache tooling. Applications may consume those storage capabilities without adopting the Beagle frontend; Store does not define Beagle's syntax, types, or program semantics.

Design principle: "If Clojure already has a form whose semantics are correct for Beagle, inherit it. If the semantics differ, name the difference."

Beagle preserves Clojure where preservation has semantic value, never for compatibility's sake. It is one source language whose parser, checker, canonicalizer, and repair tools give people and agents the same answer: what went wrong, where it occurred, and what a valid next edit is.

Types exist to make that loop reliable. Static type information checks at compile time and erases before emit; an explicitly authored binding constraint is an ordinary predicate that remains as a local runtime guard. The deeper thesis is recorded in docs/INFLUENCES.md: one typed authoring IR can target real ecosystems while preserving idiomatic output.

Beagle has a Native Core path and explicit hosted source profiles. The live profiles, extensions, form set, and materializers are compiler-owned: query beagle langs, beagle syntax, beagle sig, and beagle fields instead of copying a list that can drift.

Quickstart

Inside the flake's devshell (direnv allow), bin/beagle is the beagle command used below. No database or coordinator is required.

$ mkdir -p src build
$ cat src/main.bclj
#lang beagle/clj
(ns main)

(defn greet [name String] String
  (str "hello " name))

(println (greet "from Beagle"))

$ beagle doctor --deep
Authoring loop: ok

$ beagle check --agent src/main.bclj
0 errors

$ beagle build src/main.bclj build/main.clj
src/main.bclj -> build/main.clj
$ bb build/main.clj
hello from Beagle

For a new project, beagle init --target TARGET DIR creates an AGENTS.md and a starter source file. For Native Core, author .bgl with bare #lang beagle and choose a materializer explicitly with beagle build --materializer ... --out DIR FILE. Use beagle help and beagle langs for the current command and target surfaces.

POINTERS

The README is a map, not a second compiler manual. The compiler and generated artifacts below are the authoritative answers.

Need	Go to
Full command list and current flags	beagle help
Current source profiles, extensions, domains, and pipeline	Clojure, JavaScript, Nix, and Beagle Native Core (experimental); query beagle langs (or beagle langs --json)
Parse, form, and syntax questions	beagle syntax FILE; docs/CHEATSHEET.md
A function's signature or a record's fields	beagle sig NAME FILE...; beagle fields RECORD FILE
Callers, exports, and change impact	beagle callers FN FILE...; beagle provides FILE; beagle impact FN FILE...
Surface details not enumerated by the generated cheatsheet	docs/surface.md
CLI, authoring loop, build outputs, and Wasm contract	docs/cli.md
Compiler pipeline and where to change it	docs/architecture.md
Hosted targets versus Native Core examples	docs/targets-by-example.md
Target registry and deliberately non-target projections	docs/target-policy.md
Why the compiler's correctness claims hold	docs/self-hosting.md
Authoring-loop vocabulary and composition	docs/authoring-loops.md
Value semantics and type-driven representation selection	docs/value-semantics-ownership.md
Distilled lineage and thesis	docs/INFLUENCES.md
Stable product boundaries	docs/design-rationale.md
Historical dogfood findings	docs/dogfood-codegen-findings.md
Beagle Store and brownfield capability examples	store/README.md
Surface policy and contribution anchor	AGENTS.md

Status and license

Beagle is pre-1.0 and its surface may change through hard breaks. The repository gates correctness, not speed, and publishes no performance numbers.

Dual-licensed under the MIT License or the Apache License, Version 2.0, at your option. See LICENSE for the chooser.