NAPL Ain't a Programming Language

What if the prompt was the source code?

Write what you mean in English. A coding agent generates and locks per-target code, attributed line by line and gated by tests. The English stays the source of truth.

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greeting.napl

---

module: greeting

deps: []

targets: [typescript]

tests:

- name: greets by name

given: { name: World }

expect: { message: "Hello, World!" }

- name: trims surrounding whitespace

given: { name: " Ada " }

expect: { message: "Hello, Ada!" }

---

# Greeting

Expose a `greet` function that takes a person's name and returns a friendly

greeting message.

- The greeting has the form `Hello, <name>!`.

- Leading and trailing whitespace in the name is trimmed before use.

- An empty or whitespace-only name is rejected with an error.

Press Generate to watch the agent build this module from the prompt.

napl gen typescript hands this to a coding agent, then proves the connection. Press Run gen to replay it.

Prompts are the source

You write what you mean in a .napl file. The code is a build artifact: generated, tested, and locked read-only.

Attribution is a hard gate

Every generated line maps back to the sentence that caused it. If the toolchain cannot prove the link, the build fails.

Drift is a compile error

Edit locked code by hand and napl status exits non-zero. All change flows through prompts, with a guided fix attached.

Status: wild experiment. A bet on whether English can be a real programming language when the toolchain enforces the discipline compilers used to.