Introduction

MindScript is an experimental programming language that seamlessly combines the features of a traditional programming language and the power of large language models (LLMs). It was inspired by the pioneering work done by the LangChain team. 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 for processing JSON objects using both programmatic and inductive constructs which allow for semantic processing in way that wasn't possible before the advent of LLMs.

Information

To setup your MindScript environment, please follow the instructions in the Quick Intro.

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

$ mindscript [FLAGS] first.ms

where flags specifies the LLM backend to use, such as

$ mindscript -b openai -m gpt-4o first.ms

which specifies using the gpt-4o model from the OpenAI backend. This will of course depend on your specific setup.

Running the above should print something like

$ mindscript -b openai -m gpt-4o 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 whilst 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. Comments start with a hash # and are followed by a string.

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

println(sayHello())

Unlike other programming languages, a comment is an annotation which is attached to the value that follows it. It serves as a hint for both for programmers and for the LLM.

In this case, it is attached to the result of evaluating the next line

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

println(sayHello())

which assigns a new oracle to the newly created variable sayHello.

In MindScript there's only one construct to declare a new variable. This is done using the let keyword and providing a variable name. Variable names must always start with a alphabetic character or an underscore followed by zero or more alphanumeric characters or an underscore. The following are all valid variable names:

x
_secret
AlphaBeta
coordinate1
the_speed_of_light

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. Oracles are the main feature of MindScript.

Unlike most programming languages, function objects and oracles are always anonymous (like Python lambdas) and 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.

In MindScript everything is an expression. Hence, declarations and assignments themselves return a value. In this case, the entire line evaluates to an oracle object.

Because it evaluates to an oracle object, the comment in the preceeding line gets attached to it. Attaching a hint to an oracle guides its evaluation.

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.