Follow-on to the edge write barrier. That fix removed the full-store walk;
this one makes the pool able to notice if anything like it happens again.
WHAT WENT WRONG, precisely: the pool thrashed the live engram to a standstill
twice on 2026-08-15 and said nothing. From outside it was indistinguishable
from "busy loading" — 100% CPU, flat RSS, no output — so four wrong theories
got tried (bad binary, corrupt snapshot, WAL replay, feature flags), each
costing a deploy or a rollback. The whole time, hits/misses/evictions were
already being counted in PgCache, and the struct comment read:
/* stats (introspection only — never affect semantics) */
That comment was the bug. Self-measurement treated as decoration is why the
pool could not correct itself and why no one outside could see what it was
doing. A system that cannot read its own state cannot correct, and neither can
anyone watching it.
- pc_adapt_budget(): the loop, closed. Over a sliding window, evictions
running at a large fraction of accesses WHILE reuse is real means the
working set exceeds the budget — so grow it, geometrically, bounded by a
LIVE re-read of physical memory. Evictions alone are not pressure (a scan
evicts and never returns); evictions with reuse are. An explicit
ENGRAM_POOL_FRAMES still wins — an operator override must not be silently
overruled.
- Budget derived, not declared. A constant cannot be right: 16 GiB of frames
is arbitrary on a 48 GB host and suicidal on a 16 GB one. Even "60% of RAM
at startup" is a guess about the future — it cannot know the store grew or
the machine changed. Hence the live re-read.
- pc_report(): ONE structured emission carrying the entire sensed state,
through emit_log — El's existing telemetry, already exporting to OTLP.
Deliberately not a function per stat, and deliberately not a bespoke
/api/pool endpoint: both make observability something hand-written per noun
instead of the uniform mechanism every component already has.
- engram_pool_stats_json(): the same state readable live, wired through the
normal builtin path (codegen arity + el_seed wrapper), so the pool can be
observed in real time rather than reconstructed afterward from a stack
sample.
Verified: with the exact configuration that took production down
(ENGRAM_POOL_FRAMES=65536 → 1 GiB cache against a 2 GiB store) the engram boots
clean and serves — 0.0% CPU, 13,436 nodes / 37,663 edges, embeddings complete —
and NO pressure event fires, because the barrier removed the walk that caused
it. The controller is defense in depth; the barrier is the fix.
/api/graph/edges answered a read query by calling engram_save() to serialize
the ENTIRE graph to disk (128 MB) and then fs_read-ing it back. Two defects in
one line, and both bit production on 2026-08-15:
1. The path it wrote was ~/.neuron/engram/snapshot.json — the engram
server's CANONICAL store. A READ route overwriting the persistence
owner's canonical file. This defect had been fixed once (export moved to
a scratch path); it came back when the hand-written dispatch block was
replaced by @route dispatch and the unfixed copy is the one that
survived the merge.
2. Cost: a full snapshot write, a 128 MB read, and a parse of the whole
graph, per request, to return a bounded slice.
Calling it tonight overwrote the canonical snapshot and immediately preceded
an engram crash loop.
engram_edges_json(limit, offset) is the builtin that route's own TODO asked
for ("Future: add an engram_edges_json() builtin and drop the file round trip
entirely"). It walks g->edges directly and emits every persisted field.
limit <= 0 defaults to 1000, not unbounded: this is the endpoint that fell
over, and an unbounded default would preserve the failure mode under a new
name. Callers page explicitly.
Registered in codegen.el's builtin_arity (both plain and __ spellings) and
wrapped in el_seed.c per the project's C-builtin recipe.
transduce() is now THE single mechanism: one function, no content-type
branch inside it. It never asks whether `source` is prose, JSON, or
raw/opaque bytes (audio, etc.) — it runs one algorithm unconditionally:
split on "\n\n" as a universal boundary-marker check, and if that finds
no boundary, fall back to fixed 4096-char windows. Same node/edge wiring
(root -contains-> chunk, chunk -precedes-> next, "#"-prefixed chunk gets
a heading/section_of link) regardless of what's inside a chunk. Dedup is
the existing find_existing_by_content path via merge_manifold, applied
uniformly. The old transduce_structured JSON dataset/records/feature-node
interpretation is deleted outright, not just unused — a JSON file now
gets chunked and deduped like anything else, with no pre-computed
structure. All five ingest_* entry points still exist unchanged in name
and role; ingest_file/ingest_dir/ingest_url/ingest_llm now call the one
transduce() (ingest_stream builds its own turn-nodes directly and never
called either old function, so it's untouched).
This unlocks raw/opaque content (audio, or anything else with no natural
text/JSON shape) without any DSP, LLM call, or external API: transduce()
chunks it exactly like it chunks anything else. There is zero semantic
understanding of audio (or any payload) claimed or built here — any
meaning is expected to emerge later from Neuron's own existing mechanisms
(embedding, spreading activation, dedup) acting on this real geometry
over time.
Two small C builtins added to el_runtime.c/h (fs_size, fs_read_b64_chunk)
because El strings are NUL-unsafe under strlen-based ops and fs_read()'s
result silently truncates at the first embedded NUL, which is routine in
real binary/audio bytes. ingest_file compares fs_read()'s string length
against a real fs_size() stat() count; on mismatch it rebuilds the
payload as base64-encoded fixed 3072-byte windows read directly off disk
(binary-safe in C, verbatim, no invention), joined with the same "\n\n"
marker transduce()'s boundary scan already looks for. This is a
mechanical fidelity fix, not interpretation of content — transduce()
never learns a fallback happened. Registered both builtins' arity in
codegen.el; did not rebuild the elc compiler binary itself (unrelated,
pre-existing gap: self-hosting elc via el_seed.c fails on this worktree
independent of this change, reproduced with codegen.el reverted) — the
existing elc binary compiles calls to unregistered builtins via its
already-existing arity=-1 passthrough, confirmed by an actual clean
`elc ingest.el` + `cc` build against the modified el_runtime.c.
INGEST_KIND keeps existing only as an acquisition-mechanism selector
(dir/file/url/llm/stream — which RPC to use to fetch bytes), not as a
content-type flag; the redundant "structured" value (an alias for "file"
that hinted the now-deleted JSON branch) is removed. ingest_dir drops its
file-extension filter for the same reason: transduce() takes anything now.
Verification: local manifold construction confirmed correct against a
real captured audio file (will_clean.wav, 304288 bytes, and a 12288-byte
real prefix slice) — exact expected node/edge counts both times
(101 nodes/199 edges full file; 5 nodes/7 edges for the slice, matching
ceil(bytes/3072)+1 nodes and 2n-1 edges), with real, verbatim base64
content confirmed decoding back to the actual WAV header bytes. Compiles
clean via the real elc + the modified el_runtime.c/engram_*.c (built and
booted an actual sandbox engram off this exact source with `nsbx create
--branch`).
NOT verified this session, disclosed rather than papered over: end-to-end
server-confirmed persistence (a real before/after /api/stats delta, and a
fetched node by id) for the audio, prose, and JSON-fixture cases. Every
local nsbx sandbox engram tried tonight (two stock pre-#109 binaries
hitting the known O(N*D) brute-force scan bug, then a fresh #109/HNSW
binary built from current dev) took minutes-to indefinitely long on the
final /api/load-merge write's embedding step and hit the client's 60s
HTTP timeout before responding, even for a 5-node write. This is
confirmed as real (if slow) forward progress, not a hang: the sandbox's
WAL file was observed growing steadily across every attempt. The code's
own pre-existing HONESTY GATE correctly refused to report success in
every case, returning "load-merge failed: ..." with a
"nothing below this manifold was confirmed persisted by the server" note
instead — exactly as designed. This is an environment/infrastructure
limitation, not a defect introduced by this change: the engram server
binary itself is untouched by this commit.
Lands feat/reframe-region-setop (PR #109: native set-based reframe_region,
decorator-as-seam @route port, teacher-summon, and the M8.1 activate-latency
work — lazy-memoized cosq via eg_cosq_at + engram_vindex HNSW-accelerated
seed discovery + vindex_harvest_from_store/vindex_bench oracle) onto dev's
actual current HEAD, plus engram-tiered-storage's still-unique test suite.
RECONCILING #109 WITH engram-tiered-storage (M4-M10 HNSW/geometry/reason/
verify work): not a two-way merge. engram_vindex.c's HNSW core (search_layer/
select_neighbors/prune_links/insert) is BYTE-IDENTICAL between the two
branches; #109's copy is a strict superset (adds vindex_harvest_from_store,
used by vindex_bench.c's brute-force-vs-HNSW oracle). engram_reason.c and
engram_verify.c are also byte-identical. #109's own branch point already
carried engram-tiered-storage's M4-M10 lineage forward, so there was nothing
left to merge into #109 for those files. The one thing engram-tiered-storage
had that #109's tree dropped: its full test suite (test_vindex.c,
test_geometry.c, test_reason.c, test_verify.c, test_m7_traversal.c, the
interoception P0-P5 tests, bufpool/compaction tests, and their run_*.sh
harnesses) — ported over here unchanged.
WHY THIS NEEDED HAND RECONCILIATION, NOT A MECHANICAL MERGE: #109's branch
forked from dev on 2026-08-14 15:40 (before restructure-adjacent history
diverged the file's merge-base for `git merge` — it presented as an add/add
conflict). A straight two-dot diff (dev tip -> PR tip) applied cleanly, but
it silently reverted THREE dev fixes landed on 2026-08-14/15, after the
branch point, that the PR's diff had no way to know about:
1. qgate rescale (2026-08-14 self-review): PR's lazy eg_cosq_at rewrite of
the query-aware propagation gate dropped the shift-and-floor rescale
about ENGRAM_EMBED_S0 (measured: unrelated-pair median 0.562->raw gate
0.67, i.e. "a small tax, not a gate"). Restored the rescale, wrapped
around the lazy accessor -- the PR's actual improvement (WHEN cosq[oi]
is computed) is orthogonal to WHAT it gates on and both are kept.
2. Eviction cause decomposition (2026-08-14 self-review): dev decomposes
wm_evicted into evict_floor/evict_cap/evict_bll so WM churn is
diagnosable (identity: evicted == floor+cap+bll+dup_wm+dup_wm_global).
PR's tree predates this and dropped all three counters + their JSON
stats fields. Restored declarations, all 4 direct increment sites, the
eg_wm_carry_over bll increment, and the act-stats JSON fields --
alongside (not instead of) the PR's own P4 afferent / API-reshape
counters already in that same struct/JSON.
3. Hebbian link-formation selection (2026-08-15 self-review, TODAY): dev
selects the STRONGEST qualifying candidate for consolidation each call;
PR's tree predates this and reverted to hash-slot order (arbitrary wrt
association strength) for edge formation -- the one path that writes
PERMANENT structure. Restored the strongest-candidate while-loop,
keeping the PR's own genuine improvement at that site
(engram_adj_on_edge_added incremental-index append instead of a bare
adj_dirty=1 full-rebuild flag).
engram/src/server.el's 3-way conflicts (autoconnect_on/ise_offgraph_on env
flags, /api/nodes connected-count in responses) were pure additive: dev's
side was empty, PR's side added the feature. Took PR's side whole.
VERIFIED (nsbx sandbox only, live :8742/:7770 never touched):
- cc -std=c11 -O2, clean link against the real engram/src/server.el via
elc, zero errors.
- vindex_bench (built standalone, read-only harvest) against the real
production store clone (13,671 embedded nodes, 768-dim nomic-embed-text):
recall@10 = 1.0000 at ef 64/128/200; HNSW search 0.28-0.79ms/query vs
2.03ms/query brute-force oracle (2.6x-7.2x). HNSW build itself: 46.5s
for the full 13,671-node set -- see the flagged risk below.
- Booted the reconciled binary in an isolated nsbx sandbox (:8905, cloned
snapshot of the live store, 13,424 nodes / 37,656 edges) and called
/api/activate for real: first call after boot 41.5s (pays the one-time
HNSW build inline -- matches the standalone bench), second/third calls
356ms/605ms, no crash, correct results, act-stats JSON (including the
restored evict_floor/cap/bll fields) reads correctly.
KNOWN RISK TO FLAG BEFORE ANY LIVE CUTOVER (not fixed here; out of scope for
this dev-only land per instructions not to touch :8742/:7770): eg_vindex_sync
builds the HNSW index synchronously, inline, on the first engram_activate()
call after every process start (or index invalidation). On the real node
count that is a ~46s blocking stall on a single-threaded server -- the first
request after every restart (or its concurrent siblings) waits the full
build. Recommend a background/incremental build (or a bounded per-call build
budget) before this ever reaches the live daemon. See PR description / final
report for the fuller writeup.
Float + previously fell through to string concat (segfault); -, *, /, %
operated on raw IEEE-754 bit patterns as integers (garbage results). Floats
are now tracked via a __float_names typed-binding set (parallel to the
existing int-tracking scheme) and arithmetic is emitted as real C double
ops.
Also fixes math_log, which was wrongly aliased to natural log (duplicating
math_ln) — now uses log10 — and adds the missing <math.h> include. Rebuilt
elc binary included.
Adds engram_assert_json — a grounded "assertion envelope" primitive for a
realizer/op_assert seam (per backlog bl-53/#57) — plus purview-scoped
mutation wrappers engram_node_full_in/engram_connect_in, which refuse
non-default purviews rather than silently mutating the live store. Threads
through el_seed.c/h wrappers and the codegen.el arity table per the
project's existing C-builtin recipe.
Also rewrites lang/AGENTS.md build docs with verified (2026-08-15) findings
that el_seed.c does not compile standalone.
Will waived diff review -> build it for real. Add engram_boundary_beat() to the
runtime (afferent counter++ + engram_chrono_tick + engram_strengthen(self-anchor)
+ dharma_emit) and two act-stats counters (aff_boundary_ops, dharma_emits).
codegen cg_fn injects ONE engram_boundary_beat(op) at the entry of every
@manager/@accessor fn (fn_has_decorator, so it fires under @route @manager too) —
a decorated op self-reports with ZERO hand-written instrumentation. Rebuilt elc
self-host + the cognition engram in the worktree; ran it as the clone daemon on
:8900. Proof (/api/boundary-proof, @manager, empty body, 5x): aff_boundary_ops
0->5, dharma_emits 0->5, self activation_count 1510->1513, chrono stamp advanced.
Brought in feat/cognitive-architecture engram runtime+server for the build.
strengthen = activation bump (not content/edge write) -> identity protection
intact. Live :8742 untouched; no push, no cutover.
Ground-truth the three seams (route/telemetry+interoception/bus) with file:line
evidence. Port the tested @route codegen+parser from feat/el-route-decorators
into the worktree elc (decoration synthesizes el_route_dispatch — no hand-written
90-branch handle_request). Rebuild elc self-host; prove decorate->serve end-to-end
(route_proof.el on :8951). Rewrite surface.el as El-native decorated components:
@route + @accessor/@manager, in-process engram_* builtins (not http_get), @manager
ops emit on the real dharma_* bus (same transport as wt/swarm-ccr). Identity
keystones refused in write/relate/supersede. Gate-1 clone recipe (WAL-aside
cold-boot + ENGRAM_WAL=on) proves the FULL op set live on the clone. Boundary
auto-emit (telemetry/interoception/bus) staged as a reviewable cg_fn diff
(SEAM_STAGED.md) — needs the cognition-engram rebuild to verify link. Live :8742
untouched; no push, no cutover.
Resolve 3 conflicts:
- lang/el-compiler/runtime/el_runtime.c: keep deletion (deprecated runtime fork;
single-source-of-truth is lang/runtime/, enforced by scripts/check-single-runtime.sh).
- lang/releases/v1.0.0-20260501/el_runtime.h: keep deletion (releases/ is a generated
artifact folder, not a source path; a release is a git tag, not a folder).
- lang/runtime/el_platform_win.h: union of dev's Windows port (#80: setsockopt optval
wrapper + curl-less libcurl stubs) and our fsync(->_commit) shim needed by engram_store WAL.
Nothing in dev's build consumes the deprecated fork or releases/ folder.
- Wire paged store into the ENGRAM SERVICE (server.el, the authoritative durable
owner): boot->engram_store_boot, persist_canonical->engram_store_checkpoint,
gated by ENGRAM_STORE.
- elc (lang/elc.c + src/parser.el + codegen.el + elc-combined.el): OOB guard in
tok_kind/tok_value + parse_block progress backstop — fixes the pre-existing
unbounded-memory fold hang on sessions.el.
- engram_prune_telemetry mirrors ISE prune to the store (store_forget) so store
live-count tracks resident and stale telemetry stays bounded.
- Deployed live 2026-08-12: engram :8742 on neuron.egm+WAL, count reconciled 11552.
Establish lang/runtime/ as the ONE canonical el runtime (from the active
runtime that carries hebb/emb persistence + the new WAL); repoint the el CI
publish, engram build, elb default, and in-repo build scripts to it; delete
the el-compiler/runtime + lang/releases/ forks; add scripts/check-single-runtime.sh
drift guard.
Fixes a live prod bug: the el CI published el-runtime-c/-h from the LAGGING
el-compiler fork (0 hebb refs), so the shipped soul never persisted Hebbian
edge weights — learned co-activation was wiped on every restart. Publishing
from canonical ships the stranded 'learning that cannot outlive the process'
fix.
WAL storage engine + integrity fixes (DELETE->tombstone + store-layer
protection, safe data-dir default) ride in behind ENGRAM_WAL (default off =
byte-identical to today). Verified: engram elb per-module build clean, WAL
gate 66/66, native smoke ok, drift-guard green.
A cgi block is a top-level declaration, so codegen_streaming classifies it via
is_top_level_decl and releases it. The identity emission then searched
toplevel_exec_stmts for that same block. Declarations are excluded from that list by
construction, so the search could never succeed. A probe printed what it actually
saw for a program whose first statement is a cgi block: [Let, Expr]. It emitted
nothing, silently, with no diagnostic on any channel.
The code documented its own assumption — 'Since cgi blocks are rare and small, they
end up in toplevel_exec_stmts' — and that assumption was false.
Capture the declared values before the release and emit from them. The search is
deleted rather than repaired, so the failure mode is removed rather than relocated.
Proven discriminating (old fails, new passes):
minimal cgi program, old -> 0 el_cgi_init
minimal cgi program, fixed -> el_cgi_init with all four declared values
neuron soul, fixed -> principal present in the compiled binary (0 before),
boots in 2s, interface 110 routes in / 110 out
Consequence: a binary now carries its declared identity as a compiled constant,
which is what the identity protocol requires. Whether the runtime surfaces it to
state_get("soul_principal") is unverified and separate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
chat.el calls the runtime native engram_get_node_by_label to fetch
well-known nodes (conv:history, session:summary) by stable label rather
than by ID — immune to vector-index drift across restarts. The current
runtime never defined it, so the regenerated dist/soul.c fails to link.
Backport the function verbatim (idiom-adapted to jb_finish) from release
runtime v1.0.0-20260501 and register it as an EL builtin exactly like its
siblings: runtime definition + prototype, __-prefixed seed wrapper +
prototype, and codegen arity entry. No search-site code is touched.
Out-of-range tok_kind/tok_value reads returned runtime null (el_list_get OOB
-> 0) rather than the Eof sentinel, so the inner parse loops (parse_block,
call-arg, array-literal, match-arm) that terminate only on their close
delimiter or k=="Eof" never saw Eof once the cursor ran past the single
trailing Eof token. On unclosed-delimiter input the parser then appended AST
nodes forever -> unbounded allocation -> ~700GB -> OOM (observed compiling
neuron/sessions.el).
Fix at the choke point: tok_kind returns "Eof" and tok_value returns "" for
out-of-range positions, restoring the parser-wide contract that reads at/after
the end yield Eof. expect() no longer steps past the Eof sentinel on mismatch.
This terminates every overrun loop simultaneously; a malformed program now
surfaces as a normal (best-effort) parse end instead of exhausting memory.
Requires a self-hosted bootstrap rebuild of elc to take effect.
Add el_mem_check() to el_runtime.c: reads ELC_MAX_MEM_MB (default 512),
checks RSS via getrusage (macOS bytes / Linux KB normalised to MB), prints
a clear diagnostic to stderr and exits(1) if exceeded.
Wire it into two places:
- compiler.el: upfront check at --emit-header entry point
- codegen.el: per-function check in the streaming loop after each
el_arena_pop, so runaway growth is caught at the earliest function
boundary rather than after the machine is already dying.
The --emit-header path previously called parse() which builds the entire
program AST in memory before writing the .elh file. For checkout.el (~491
lines with HTML template trees and deep BinOp string-concat chains), this
exhausted memory before the header could be written.
Fix: replace parse() + emit_header() with scan_fn_sigs_el() +
emit_header_from_sigs(). The new path tokenises the source once, then
walks the flat token list skipping over function bodies entirely — peak
memory is O(tokens) instead of O(whole-program AST).
New functions in parser.el:
- scan_type_el: reads a type annotation and returns its El source string
- scan_params_el: reads (name: Type, ...) and returns El params string
- scan_fn_sigs_el: token-level scan that collects El-style fn signatures
without building any expression AST nodes
New function in compiler.el:
- emit_header_from_sigs: writes .elh from scan_fn_sigs_el output
Self-hosting check: elc compiled with new elc, diff of outputs is
identical (zero difference).
Smoke test: elc --emit-header checkout.el produces correct three-entry
.elh (previously truncated at two entries due to mid-parse OOM).
The El lexer silently skips '#', so {#each} lexes as LBrace Ident:"each"
and {#if} lexes as LBrace If ... (using the If keyword token, not Hash).
The existing {#each} check used k2=="Hash" which was dead code.
Parser changes (parser.el):
- Add parse_raw_text_content(): collects all tokens as raw text until
</tag_name>, bypassing El expression parsing. Used for <style> and
<script> elements so CSS/JS content isn't parsed as El expressions.
- parse_html_element(): use raw-text mode for <style> and <script> tags.
- parse_html_children(): fix {#each} detection (k2=="Ident", k3=="each"
instead of dead k2=="Hash" check). Add {#if cond}...{#else}...{/if}
support generating HtmlIf AST nodes.
Codegen changes (codegen.el):
- Add cg_html_if(): generates if (cond_c) { then_c } else { else_c }
for HtmlIf nodes.
- cg_html_parts(): dispatch HtmlIf to cg_html_if.
Implement compile_test() entry point that emits a C test harness instead
of a normal program. Test blocks (previously skipped) now compile to
static functions with per-assertion pass/fail tracking. Assert statement
added to parser and codegen. Runtime extended with now_ns, fs_list_json,
json_build_object, json_build_array, json_escape_string, state_has,
state_get_or. Fix float negation codegen, float equality comparisons,
time_to_parts return type (JSON string), time_format empty-fmt, json_set
raw-value semantics, state_keys JSON array return. All 310 native tests
pass across 9 suites (core, text, string, math, env, state, json, time, fs).
test "name" { ... } blocks were not recognized by the self-hosted
compiler. The body { } was parsed as a Map literal, creating a huge
AST with O(n²) string concatenation in the toplevel_exec_stmts loop
(which had no arena scope). A 272-line test file would consume 400MB+
and a 720-line file importing the full compiler source caused 150GB
usage and crashed the machine.
Two fixes:
1. Skip Test tokens in codegen_streaming before parse_one() —
advance past "name" and skip_to_rbrace on the body block.
Test blocks are never compiled; self-hosted compiler has no test runner.
2. Add per-statement arena scope to toplevel_exec_stmts emission loop,
matching the el_main_body loop. Frees intermediate strings after
each statement to prevent O(n²) accumulation from any unrecognized
construct that reaches that path.
Result: test_string.el (272 lines, 27 test blocks): 0MB peak (was 400MB+).
test_compiler.el (720 lines + 8728 imported): 15MB peak (was 150GB).
Wrapped compile() body in el_arena_push/pop so the arena is active
before lex() and scan_fn_sigs(). Previously both ran with
_tl_arena_active=0, leaking all token and signature strings permanently.
Also prevents inner pop(mark=0) calls from deactivating the arena
between per-function scopes. Verified: self-host PASS, RSS stable.
- Flat token list: lexer emits [kind0, val0, kind1, val1, ...] instead of [{kind,val}, ...]
Eliminates per-token ElMap allocation (~112B × N tokens)
- str_char_code hot loop: char classification via Int codes, no strdup per char
- Batch c_escape: str_slice clean runs instead of char-at per byte
- Parser updated to use tok_at/tok_kind/tok_value stride-2 accessors
Combines two orthogonal optimizations:
1. c_escape batching (from alpha): ASCII runs emitted as str_slice segments instead
of one str_char_at string per byte. O(N) allocs → O(K) where K = special chars.
2. scan_interp_string batching (from beta): char dispatch via str_char_code (Int)
+ clean_start tracking to flush plain runs as str_slice. Eliminates per-char
string allocations in the string-literal scanning hot path.
Result on web/src/main.el: 14.5MB -> 13.4MB peak RSS (-7.6%).
Self-hosting: PASS.
Combines two orthogonal optimizations:
1. Flat token list (from beta): lex() returns [Any] with alternating kind/value
pairs instead of [Map], eliminating one ElMap per token (~3 mallocs each).
Parser updated: tok_kind(t,i) = t[2*i], tok_value(t,i) = t[2*i+1].
2. Char code dispatch (from alpha): lex() hot loop uses str_char_code -> Int
instead of str_char_at -> strdup String for all character classification.
Eliminates ~400K x 16B = 6.4MB of temporary string allocations.
scan_digits and scan_ident also updated to use str_char_code.
Result on main.el: 17.1MB -> 14.4MB peak RSS (-16%).
Self-hosting: PASS.
Replace str_char_at (returns strdup String) with str_char_code (returns Int)
in the main lex() while loop and scan_digits/scan_ident helpers.
For a 400KB combined source, str_char_at was allocating ~400K x 16B = 6.4MB
of transient 2-byte strings for the ch variable alone. str_char_code returns
an integer directly — zero allocation.
Add Int-based helpers: is_digit_code, is_alpha_code, is_ws_code,
is_alnum_or_underscore_code. Rewrite lex() operator dispatch using char
code constants (e.g. '/'=47, '"'=34, '='=61).
Result on main.el: 17.1MB -> 15.4MB peak RSS (-10%).
Self-hosting: PASS.
bigmerge
will.anderson