I made an esoteric programming language that's read like a spellbook
i made an esoteric programming language which i call spellscript. every program is a "spell" written in a "grimoire," and you have to use keywords like summon, enchant, inscribe, and conjure. it's literally read like a spellbook because the syntax consists of all natural language, and newlines are optional. your code can now be an essay, like everybody wants! for example, if you want to print something, you'd write: `begin the grimoire. inscribe whispers of "hello, world!". close the grimoire.` it has variables, dynamic typing, arrays, functions, conditionals, loops, string manipulation,…
I made an esoteric programming language that's read like a spellbook launched on October 12, 2025 with 176 votes, #157 of 8,178 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
SpellScript is an esoteric programming language where code reads like a spellbook. Programs are written as "spells" within "grimoires" using natural language keywords like summon, enchant, inscribe, and conjure. Designed for programmers curious about natural language syntax, it supports variables, dynamic typing, arrays, functions, conditionals, loops, and string manipulation. The language prioritizes readability while maintaining parseability, making it unusual yet comprehensible compared to more intentionally obscure programming languages.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
esotoric programming language that's read like a spellbook - sirbread/spellscript
an esoteric programming language where code reads like magical incantations from an ancient spellbook. every program is a "spell" written in a "grimoire," so theorhetically, you can write all your code english essay style due to its no newline/indentation requirement. begin the grimoire. summon the power with essence of 7. conjure ritual named amplify with value to return value multiplied by value. enchant power with essence 0 of through ritual amplify with power. inscribe whispers of "the power is amplified: " bound with power. close the grimoire. output: the power is amplified:from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
i made an esoteric programming language which i call spellscript. every program is a "spell" written in a "grimoire," and you have to use keywords like summon, enchant, inscribe, and conjure. it's literally read like a spellbook because the syntax consists of all natural language, and newlines are optional. your code…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
- LLiteScript2014 · luciotato.github.io · ▲76
Bolt – A super-fast, statically-typed scripting language written in C2025 · github.com · ▲261I've built many interpreters over the years, and Bolt represents my attempt at building the scripting language I always wanted. This is the first public release, 0.1.0! I've felt like most embedded languages have been moving towards safety and typing over years, with things like Python type hints, the explosive popularity of typescript, and even typing in Luau, which powers one of the largest scripted evironments in the world. Bolt attempts to harness this directly in the lagnauge rather than as a preprocessing step, and reap benefits in terms of both safety and performance. I intend to be…
- ICI created a language called AntiLang – breaking all the conventions2025 · siruscodes.github.io · ▲143
AntiLang is an interpreted programming language written in Go. The basic idea of this is to keep all the logical parts of a language same, but reverse the structure of it. The idea for this project came when I was having a long midnight conversation with my friend and thought of writing such a weird language. The initial draft was far worse than the current implementation; we thought of reversing the brackets and the language would be read from bottom to top. I'm happy that I dropped that idea Technical details: As the interpreter is written in Golang, I compiled it to WASM, and the whole…
The Blots Programming Language2025 · blots-lang.org · ▲55I've been working on this small, slightly weird expression-oriented programming language for a little while now and feel ready to share it with others. I use it pretty often now in my day-to-day and work life, as a scratchpad for doing a bit of quick math or picking some pieces of data out of a JSON payload. Would really appreciate any feedback about the syntax, docs, features that are glaringly missing, etc. Before anybody mentions it: I know the performance is pretty lousy when dealing with a lot of data. If you can believe it, the runtime is about 100x faster than it used to be! Long term…
Dak – a Lisp-like language that transpiles to JavaScript2023 · daklang.com · ▲94Hi HN, author here. Happy to answer any questions. I had an itch to make a lisp like language that was a thin layer on top JavaScript. Something that could leverage the thriving ecosystem that exists around JavaScript. It's brittle, hot off the oven. Besides being a fan of parenthesis, I think macros fill in a gap that the JavaScript ecosystem today fills in with one-off compilers, bundler plugins and such. Macros can't do everything, but for example I think they have the potential to enable things like JSX, Solid and Svelte style libraries. Take the tour to get a feel for what it can do and…
More dev tools this month
the category →

open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 28d ago · github.com

Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.
Dev tools · 26d ago · github.com
OpenBot▲362Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer
Dev tools · 23d ago · openbot.run
Talanoa▲346Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…
Dev tools · 21d ago · talanoa.email
CoreSpeed▲332One MCP for everything your agents need: apps, memory, tools
Dev tools · 28d ago · corespeed.io
Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, October 2025
the whole month →


I went down the rabbit hole on a side project and ended up building this: Strange Attractors(https://blog.shashanktomar.com/posts/strange-attractors). It’s built with three.js. Working on it reminded me of the little "maths for fun" exercises I used to do while learning programming in early days. Just trying things out, getting fascinated and geeky, and being surprised by the results. I spent way too much time on this, but it was extreme fun. My favorite part: someone pointed me to the Simone Attractor on Threads. It is a 2D attractor and I asked GPT to extrapolate it to…
AI · Oct 2025 · blog.shashanktomar.com

Autism Simulator▲779Hey all, I built this. It’s not trying to capture every autistic experience (that’d be impossible). It’s based on my own lived experience as well as that of friends on the spectrum. I'm trying to give people a feel for what masking, decision fatigue, and burnout can look like day-to-day. That’s hard to explain in words, but easier to show through choices and stats. I'm not trying to "define autism". I’ve gotten good feedback here about resilience, meds, and difficulty tuning. I’ll keep tweaking it. If even a few people walk away thinking, "ah, maybe that’s why my coworker struggles in those…
Life & fun · 2025 · autism-simulator.vercel.app
