On this page

Compile time

The compiler turns .prime source files into runtime-ready artifacts on disk. It runs only at build time; the runtime never re-parses source.

The compile pipeline

Compile pipeline — .prime to runtime artifacts

* L2 is opt-in (gated by ANTHROPIC_API_KEY or DEEPSEEK_API_KEY).

L1 — schema (mandatory)

Validates required fields, ref existence, decorator constraints, kind-specific schemas. Pure structural — no LLM call. Runs in milliseconds per atom.

L3 — cross-atom (mandatory)

Walks the resolved edge graph; flags cycles in requires, surfaces contradicts pairs, validates kind compatibility on validates-with and extends. Also pure — runs over the in-memory graph after L1.

L2 — semantic (opt-in)

Calls a small LLM (DeepSeek by default, ~$0.0001/atom) to catch semantic drift — e.g. a rule whose severity says low but whose remediation describes a critical blocker. Gated by API key; absent the key, the compiler emits a notice and skips L2.

Chunker — kind-aware projection

Walks the AST per atom and emits summary.md / core.md / full.md. The split rules are kind-specific (see Projection).

Emitters

Two artifacts produced per build:

One directory per atom at compiled/<prefix>/<short-id>/ containing atom.yaml (metadata), graph.yaml (resolved edges), and chunks/{summary,core,full}.md.
One global index at compiled/_index.xml — the always-loaded surface; one <cluster> per domain; <atom> entries with summary inline + edges as children.

Idempotence + caching

Compiling the same sources twice produces byte-identical output. L2 results are cached by content-hash in .l2-cache.json so re-compilations don't re-pay LLM cost for unchanged atoms.

CLI surface

# Compile one file (smoke test).
prime compile path/to/atom.prime

# Compile a whole sources tree to compiled/.
bun scripts/build-atom-dirs.ts \
  --src primes/sources \
  --out primes/compiled

# Compile + run L2 + show all errors.
prime compile primes/sources/*.prime --deep --strict

# Validate without emitting.
prime check --registry

See Parser & AST, Checkers, and Chunker for how each stage is built.