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docs: one authoritative spec (SPEC / LANGUAGE_CONTRACT / GRAMMAR / SYNTAX overlap)

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Documentation
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Domain
documentation

Research direction

The issue mentions four documents in the docs/ directory: SPEC.md, LANGUAGE_CONTRACT.md, GRAMMAR.md, and SYNTAX.md. Start by reading these files to understand their current content and overlaps. Look for duplicated normative statements. The goal is to consolidate them into one authoritative spec, ensuring all executable examples still run and updating references in llms.txt and the mentioned skills.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

area:docs kind:decision

Problem. Four documents cover overlapping ground on what the language IS: docs/SPEC.md (2,272 lines), docs/LANGUAGE_CONTRACT.md, docs/GRAMMAR.md and docs/SYNTAX.md. Overlap means copies, and copies disagree. The 2026-09-22 prompt audit found write-eigenscript teaching three semantics the language had since changed (loop-body scope, observer keying, constant convergence), because it summarised a copy rather than the contract.

What mature languages do. There is exactly one authoritative specification, separate from the tutorial: the Go spec (a single page), Python's Language Reference, the Rust Reference.

Bar.

  1. One document is THE spec. It carries the grammar (or includes GRAMMAR by reference) and the contract rules. Every normative statement lives there exactly once.
  2. The other three are either folded in, or turned into explanation that links to spec sections instead of restating them. Checked: no normative rule text appears in two documents (a duplication grep, or the docs-claims NAMES class).
  3. Every executable example in the merged spec still runs.
  4. llms.txt and the write-eigenscript / eigenscript-lang-review skills point at the one spec.

Ranked #4 of the docs follow-ups (2026-09-22 comparison with other languages).

Dominant language
C
Stars
3
Forks
7
Avg merge
3h 56m
Merged PRs (30d)
102

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