Reed

Language translation layer—source code to IR to source code.

Repository: github.com/rhizome-lab/reed

Overview

Reed provides bidirectional translation between programming languages through a common intermediate representation. Instead of N×M converters between languages, Reed uses N readers and M writers with a shared IR.

Crates

Core

Crate	Description
rhizome-reed-ir	Common AST intermediate representation
rhizome-reed-sexpr	S-expression serialization for the IR

Readers

Crate	Description
rhizome-reed-read-lua	Lua source → Reed IR
rhizome-reed-read-ts	TypeScript source → Reed IR

Writers

Crate	Description
rhizome-reed-write-lua	Reed IR → Lua source
rhizome-reed-write-ts	Reed IR → TypeScript source

Architecture

Source A ──→ Reader A ──→ Reed IR ──→ Writer B ──→ Source B

The IR captures common programming constructs:

• Expressions (literals, binaries, calls, etc.)
• Statements (assignments, conditionals, loops)
• Functions and modules

This enables:

• Language migration: Convert legacy code to modern languages
• Code generation: Generate implementations in multiple targets
• Cross-language tooling: Build tools that work on the IR

Usage

use rhizome_reed_read_lua::parse_lua;
use rhizome_reed_write_ts::write_ts;

// Parse Lua source
let ir = parse_lua("function add(a, b) return a + b end")?;

// Write as TypeScript
let ts_code = write_ts(&ir)?;
// "function add(a: any, b: any): any { return a + b; }"

Integration with Spore

Reed powers verb execution in Spore's Lotus integration. Entity behaviors stored as S-expressions are translated to Lua at runtime:

S-expr (storage) → Reed IR → Lua (execution)

Links

• GitHub
• Documentation