Bootstrap requirements

Status: bootstrap implemented; the language design continues beyond it.

• The language is HQL — Hyper Query Language. Repository and binary: hql; sources: .hql; ordinary code fences: hql. Hibernate's HQL naming collision is accepted. Specialized HyperMarkDown fences may eventually include hql#query, hql#eval, and hql#declare; these are not implemented.
• HQL is a typed functional language for querying and computing over structured knowledge, initially centered on HyperMarkDown.
• HyperMarkDown remains the authored/storage representation. HQL must have a pure language core separate from document parsing, resolution, and I/O.
• First milestone, met: parse, type-check, and evaluate literals and same-type numeric addition through the library and hql eval; check a file through hql check. Int and Float are separate types; neither widens.
• Second milestone, met: a program of statements and bindings; pipelines over a vault of documents; the card family; semantic retrieval and graph traversal; a reporting queue with configurable modes; and a command-line host with run, repl, render, standard input and JSON output. See the grammar, the CLI and reporting.
• Failures must be diagnostics, not panics or silent arithmetic wrapping.
• Rust edition 2024, cargo, clap derive, tests, and the grem knowledge structure are the bootstrap stack. Preserve the generated dormant control layer.

Explicit non-goals

Still out of scope: module imports and init.hql, an HMD parser (documents are read as Markdown with a fenced header, not through HyperMarkDown's own parser), constraints and proofs, a standard library, diagrams, effects of any kind — so no persistence and no hql#declare — editor integration, and a complete language specification.

The original list also named graphs, a Card runtime, pipelines and functions. Those are now implemented at the level the grammar records, which is a working subset and not the designed language.

See architecture, expression behavior, and design direction.