plan-kernel 0.1.2

Jupyter kernel for interactive PLAN evaluation.

plan-kernel

A Jupyter kernel for the PLAN virtual machine. Type Plan Asm in a cell, see the reduced PLAN value back.

plan-kernel is intended for tutorial use: learning what PLAN's three opcodes (Pin / Law / Elim) do, exercising BPLAN's named primitives, and walking through small programs (Church booleans, factorial, Y-combinator) one reduction at a time.

Status

Alpha. All nine phases of PLAN.md are complete: vendored runtime, Plan Asm parser, macro expander, cell-level evaluator, structural renderer, cell magics, BPLAN op prelude, Jupyter kernel + CLI, and a starter set of teaching fixtures + tour notebook. A fresh notebook can evaluate (Add 2 3) in cell 1.

PyPI publication is the next step.

Install

From PyPI (once published)

pip install plan-kernel
python -m plan_kernel install      # registers the kernelspec with Jupyter
jupyter notebook              # "PLAN" appears in the kernel picker

plan-kernel is the PyPI package; plan_kernel is the import name. The same package supplies both the Python library and the Jupyter kernel — there is no separate plan-kernel-kernel distribution.

From a clone (local development)

If you've cloned this repo (the typical case while plan-kernel is pre-1.0), do an editable install so changes to the source tree take effect without re-installing:

git clone [e-mail]:sigilante/marduk.git
cd marduk/packages/plan-kernel
python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate     # optional but recommended
pip install -e '.[dev]'                                # installs ipykernel + pytest
pytest                                                 # confirm the runtime smoke test passes

To register the kernel with Jupyter so it appears in the notebook kernel picker:

python -m plan_kernel install               # user-level install (writes to ~/.local/share/jupyter/kernels/plan-kernel/)
# or
python -m plan_kernel install --prefix .venv   # install only inside the active virtualenv

Verify the registration:

jupyter kernelspec list                 # "plan-kernel" should appear

Launch:

jupyter notebook       # or: jupyter lab

In a new notebook, choose "PLAN" from the kernel picker. A fresh notebook has the BPLAN op prelude pre-bound, so (Add 2 3) evaluates to 5 in cell 1.

Uninstall

jupyter kernelspec remove plan-kernel        # remove kernelspec only
pip uninstall plan-kernel               # remove the package

Quickstart

A cell is a sequence of Plan Asm forms. The result of the last non-bind form displays; bind-only cells render bind <name> summary lines.

(Add 2 3)

5

Define a law and apply it:

(#bind id
  (#pin
    (#law "id" (id x)
      x)))

(id 42)

42

The K combinator and a use:

(#bind k
  (#pin
    (#law "k" (k a b)
      a)))

(k 7 99)

7

The fixtures in tests/fixtures/ cover identity, K, S, arithmetic, Elim on a nat, and Church booleans — copy any of them into a cell to see them run.

What's a cell?

A cell is a sequence of Plan Asm forms — the same syntax accepted by the canonical Reaver parser (vendor/reaver/src/hs/PlanAssembler.hs), minus #macro, #export, and @include (those need module-loading semantics that don't make sense in a notebook).

Supported macros: #pin, #law, #app, #bind. The BPLAN op prelude auto-loads on kernel start, so (Add 2 3) works in cell 1.

Magic reference

Magics live on lines that start with %, at the very top of the cell. Comments and blank lines above them stop magic parsing — magics must lead the cell body.

Magic	Scope	Effect
%backend evaluate	this cell	Use the formal Python evaluator (default).
%backend bevaluate	this cell	Use the jet-aware evaluator. Faster for arithmetic-heavy programs.
%reset	persistent	Drop all user bindings. The BPLAN op prelude is reloaded.
%env	read-only	Display user bindings (sorted, comma-separated). Prelude names are filtered out.

%backend reverts at end-of-cell. %reset is permanent until the next %reset. %env's output prepends to the cell's value text when the cell also has a body.

Troubleshooting

No module named 'plan_kernel' when launching the kernel. The kernel.json's argv uses the Python interpreter that ran plan-kernel install. Reinstall from the active venv: pip install -e '.[dev]' and python -m plan_kernel install.

plan-kernel not in the kernel picker. Confirm the install: jupyter kernelspec list should show a plan-kernel row. If --prefix .venv was used, only that venv's Jupyter sees it; install without --prefix for a user-wide registration.

unbound: <name> for a name that's clearly defined. Macro expansion runs before the body's evaluation, so a bind form (#bind name expr) must appear before any reference to name in cell-execution order. Within a cell, this is the form order; across cells, the binding from cell N is in scope for cell N+1.

Recursive laws hit RecursionError. plan-kernel bumps Python's recursion limit to 200K during evaluation — past that, the BPLAN harness's own depth guard fires. Most tutorial-scale recursion is fine; deep factorials or Y-combinator-driven loops may exhaust it.

%env shows nothing. It filters the BPLAN op prelude. Pass prelude=False when constructing PlanKernelEvaluator programmatically to see all names, or just rely on the filtered view in the kernel.

Naming

This package was originally called Marduk. As the runtime portion grew into a generally useful artifact in its own right, it took the name; the kernel was renamed plan-kernel and the runtime now lives at packages/marduk/ in this monorepo. See PLAN_KERNEL.md for design notes.

License

MIT.