Built in the open

The problem: A language that asks you to trust it should show how it was made.
An example: Why does assert become a contract? The answer is an ADR, with the options that were rejected.
What Nikaia checks: Every design decision is a public ADR with the evidence that settled it. Every change has one entry in the changelog. The compiler is moving into Nikaia: the analyses for sharing, pausing, what a function throws and which statements may overlap are already Nikaia code.
The limit: The figures below are dated. The changelog and the repository are the current record.

Self-hosted share of the toolchain lines of compiler code written in Nikaia, end of each day; the bars run to 40 %

Sep 282.0 %

Sep 292.4 %

Sep 308.4 %

Oct 110.2 %

Oct 217.6 %

Oct 319.7 %

Oct 430.6 %

The analyses for sharing, pausing, what a function throws and which statements may overlap are already Nikaia code: 18 625 lines in 61 modules, moved over at about 4.8 percentage points a day.

Claude Opus started writing the compiler on September 5, 2026. Each design decision is argued in a public ADR and accepted by a human.

≈ 41

commits a day

≈ 2 000

lines of compiler code a day

≈ 28

CHANGELOG entries a day

As of 0.0.454, October 4, 2026, counted from git log and scripts/self_hosting.py. Every change, one entry each →

Built in the open

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