# keywords that reserve nothing

One `Ishikawa → scientific method → Six Sigma` loop. The record below is the
commit message as written at the time, before the outcome was known to anyone
reading this file.

## Record — `0143cc4`

```
ANSWER: is a grammar a convention, or a region?

Both, at different layers -- and it is the same split as serialization: the
convention is the BASIS, never the ACT.

  lexeme -> token      `fn` means function-start because someone said so   CONVENTION
  shape recognition    given tokens, which construct is this               REGION
  source -> structure  parsing is transduction onto that basis             GEOMETRY
  byte traversal       something must read them in order                   IRREDUCIBLE

Three things push the ACT toward region rather than convention: ambiguity
(a * b needs context; a grammar resolves it with the lexer hack, a region by
neighbourhood), error recovery (nearest-region is free), and precedence, which
is ordering along an axis with a conventional parameter.

AND THE SHOULD GATE SAYS NO TO THE OBVIOUS MOVE

Every other table this session moved to data. This one stays code. The keyword
set is CLOSED by the language definition -- it does not leak the way an
allowlist does -- and the lexer runs before the program is understood, so a
program can never declare its own keywords. Externalising it costs file I/O on
every compile and buys nothing. Same verdict as is_digit in ASCII.

WHAT WAS ACTUALLY WRONG: five of 46 keywords were consumed by no parser or
codegen path. sealed, activate, seed, protocol, impl. Each stole an identifier
from users for nothing.

SECOND SILENT MISCOMPILATION OF THE DAY. Using one did not fail to parse:

    let seed = 42
    let impl = seed + 1

compiled CLEAN -- zero cc errors -- and printed 0 instead of 44. No diagnostic
at any layer. Fixed by removing the five.

A DEFECT IN MY OWN MEASUREMENT, caught before it did damage: my first pass
checked only parser.el and reported `test` as inert too. codegen consumes it at
4135 for --test mode, and the tree has 408 uses. Removing it would have broken
every test in the suite. The measurement was re-run across all four consumers.

100/100 native + 2 new, 31/31 integration, fixpoint ok.
```

## Record — `067dd40`

```
answer the parsing question: a grammar is a basis, and five keywords reserved nothing
```