Introduction

MindScript is a programming language that seamlessly combines the features of a traditional programming language and the power of large language models (LLMs). The question was:

"What if, rather than bolting LLM-powered functions onto a Python framework, we built a Turing-complete language from the ground up with LLM capabilities as first-class citizens?"

The motivation behind MindScript is to provide programmers with a minimalistic language using both programmatic and inductive constructs which allow for semantic processing in a way that wasn't possible before the advent of LLMs.

This manual assumes you have msg installed and working. msg is the state of the art MindScript runtime. To set up your environment, follow the instructions in the Installation Guide.

Your first MindScript program

Let's go over the basics of writing a MindScript program. First, we create a file with the following content

# Say hello in a funny way!
let sayHello = oracle() -> Str

println(sayHello())

and save it as first.ms. In order to execute it, run

msg run first.ms

Running the above should print something like

$ msg run first.ms
Greetings, Earthling! Ready for some rib-tickling fun
and intergalactic high fives? Let's make today out of
this world! 🚀😄

The greeting will depend on what your LLM came up with by following the instruction Say hello in a funny way!.

Let's go over the program, line by line. The very first line is a comment.

# Say hello in a funny way!
let sayHello = oracle() -> Str

println(sayHello())

Unlike other programming languages, comments are not ignored, but they are annotations that attach descriptive text to the value that follows it (or before it, if there's an expression on the left). It serves as a hint for both for programmers and for the LLM.

In this case, it is attached to the value produced by evaluating the next expression:

# Say hello in a funny way!
let sayHello = oracle() -> Str

println(sayHello())

This line creates an oracle that generates a string, and assigns it to the newly created variable sayHello. The annotation attaches itself to this oracle. Let's break this down further.

The expression oracle() -> Str declares an oracle. Oracles are like functions, expect that their implementation is a black box and their behavior is guided by hints; in this case, the instruction "Say hello in a funny way" and the return type Str. Oracles are the main feature of MindScript.

Unlike most programming languages, function and oracles are always anonymous values that are often immediately assigned to a variable. In addition, they are always typed, and input and output values are checked at runtime, yielding an error if they don't conform.

The construct let VARNAME declares a new variable. Variable names must always start with a alphabetic character or an underscore followed by zero or more alphanumeric characters or an underscore, such as x, _secret, AlphaBeta, coordinate1, and the_speed_of_light.

In MindScript everything is an expression. Even declarations and assignments themselves return a value. In this case, the entire line evaluates to an oracle object. Because of that, the annotation in the preceeding line attaches to it.

In the final line we evaluate the oracle and print the result followed by a newline

# Say hello in a funny way!
let sayHello = oracle() -> Str

println(sayHello())

Because the oracle is a black box, it will return an arbitrary string guided by the hint. Multiple executions of this program should print different greetings.

This example gives you a first taste of MindScript.