SYS — Systems Spec Language

Human intent → anthropomorphism-free systems spec → codegen prompt.

Why

Pedro Domingos asked, on 16 September 2026:

"We need a non-anthropomorphic vocabulary to talk about AI. Any ideas?" — @pmddomingos

This is one idea, made runnable. syslang/lexicon.py holds 29 rewrite rules that trade mind-verbs for systems verbs — understands becomes encodes / maps, wants becomes is scored toward, thinks becomes assigns score — and 16 of those verbs are flagged by lint wherever they survive. The eight slots below are the rest of it: a fixed shape for saying what a system takes, holds, and emits, without a word that implies it minds the outcome.

Mac / Homebrew Python 3.14

You must be inside this repo, and the folder syslang/ must sit next to run.py.

cd /path/to/sys-lang
ls
# expect: run.py  syslang/  examples/  tests/  pyproject.toml

If you copied files into another project (fly64) without the syslang package directory, python3 -m syslang will fail with No module named syslang.

Option A — no install (recommended starter)

cd /path/to/sys-lang
python3 run.py lint examples/ticket_triage.human.txt
python3 run.py translate examples/ticket_triage.human.txt
python3 run.py translate examples/ticket_triage.human.txt --prompt
python3 run.py translate examples/ticket_triage.human.txt --out /tmp/ticket.sys.md

Verify — check a spec's symbols against real source

lint and translate are one-way. verify closes the loop: parse an existing spec, extract the code identifiers each slot names, scan a source tree, and report ok/missing per symbol — exposing invented claims before codegen.

cd /path/to/sys-lang
python3 run.py verify /tmp/ticket.sys.md /path/to/code_base
# - IN: filename: ok  ·  inventory_db: missing

verify reads a spec file as-is (it does not re-translate or re-guess slots), supports dotted names (store.save), and exits non-zero when any symbol is missing.

Option B — install editable

cd /path/to/sys-lang
python3 -m pip install -e .
python3 -m syslang lint examples/ticket_triage.human.txt
python3 -m syslang translate examples/ticket_triage.human.txt --prompt

Tests

cd /path/to/sys-lang
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -p 'test_*.py'

Wrong (this is what failed):

python3 -m unittest tests.test_translate   # needs PYTHONPATH=.
python3 -m syslang                         # needs install or PYTHONPATH=.

Equivalent with explicit path:

cd /path/to/sys-lang
PYTHONPATH=. python3 -m syslang translate examples/ticket_triage.human.txt --prompt
PYTHONPATH=. python3 -m unittest tests.test_translate

Spec slots

IN OUT STATE MAP OBJ C FAIL EVAL

Banned verbs are rewritten. Empty slots stay UNSPECIFIED.