Show HN: MOL – A programming language where pipelines trace themselves
Hi HN,

I built MOL, a domain-specific language for AI pipelines. The main idea: the pipe operator |> automatically generates execution traces — showing timing, types, and data at each step. No logging, no print debugging.

Example:

    let index be doc |> chunk(512) |> embed("model-v1") |> store("kb")
This auto-prints a trace table with each step's execution time and output type. Elixir and F# have |> but neither auto-traces.

Other features: - 12 built-in domain types (Document, Chunk, Embedding, VectorStore, Thought, Memory, Node) - Guard assertions: `guard answer.confidence > 0.5 : "Too low"` - 90+ stdlib functions - Transpiles to Python and JavaScript - LALR parser using Lark

The interpreter is written in Python (~3,500 lines). 68 tests passing. On PyPI: `pip install mol-lang`.

Online playground (no install needed): http://135.235.138.217:8000

We're building this as part of IntraMind, a cognitive computing platform at CruxLabx. """

> The Killer Feature: |> with Auto-Tracing. No other language has this combination

Of the languages listed, Elixir, Python and Rust can all achieve this combination. Elixir has a pipe operator built-in, and Python and Rust have operator overloading, so you could overload the bitwise | operator (or any other operator you want) to act as a pipeline operator. And Rust and Elixir have macros, and Python has decorators, which can be used to automatically add logging/tracing to functions.

It's not automatic for all functions, though having to be explicit/selective about what is logged/traced is generally considered a good thing. It's rare that real-world software wants to log/trace literally everything, since it's not only costly (and slow) but also a PII risk.

In Rust, wouldn't implementing BitOr for Fn/FnOnce/FnMut violate the orphan rule?
I'm envisioning that in Rust (and Python), the operator overload would be on a class/struct. It would be the macro/decorator (the same one that adds logging) which would turn the function definition into an object that implements Fn.
> Elixir and F# have |> but neither auto-traces.

Using dbg/2 [1]:

  # In dbg_pipes.exs
  __ENV__.file
  |> String.split("/", trim: true)
  |> List.last()
  |> File.exists?()
  |> dbg()
This code prints:

  [dbg_pipes.exs:5: (file)]
  __ENV__.file #=> "/home/myuser/dbg_pipes.exs"
  |> String.split("/", trim: true) #=> ["home", "myuser", "dbg_pipes.exs"]
  |> List.last() #=> "dbg_pipes.exs"
  |> File.exists?() #=> true
---

1. Debugging - dbg/2

https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/debugging.html#dbg-2

I should have bet more on Elixir. I did work in F# but MS really didn't seem serious enough about it, but the Elixer community keeps going strong.
  • bb88
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  • 5 hours ago
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This strikes me as cool to see someone build another language with python using lark, it's also possible to override the ">>" or "|" characters in python to achieve the same thing, and also you don't have to worry about the "lark" grammar.

I had a custom lark grammar I thought was cool to do something similar, but after a while I just discarded it and went back to straight python, and found it was faster my an order of magnitude.

Cool project. Could You expand on what is the use case for something like it compares to e.g. a python library? Maybe an example of more complex workflows or open ended loops/agents that can showcase the pros of using such a language compared to other solutions. Are these pipelines durable for example or how do they execute?
  • qrios
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  • 6 hours ago
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Very interesting! I'll definitely give it a try. However, the documentation link[1] isn't working at the moment (404).

[1] https://crux-ecosystem.github.io/MOL/

Kind of like Ruby... with pipes. Elixir has them, but this reminds me more like Ruby.