The English Compiler

We know that all great™ projects start with awesome™ detailed functional specifications. Which is typically written in English, or its many other spoken language alternatives.

So what if, instead of writing code from functional specs, we simply compile it directly to code?

Does it work? Yes Is it production ready? No

This is simply a POC. However if you like to take it further, you may give it a try.

@ TODO : Insert video here on the project

How do I install it?

The easiest way is to simply install it from NPM

npm install -g english-compiler

How do I configure it?

From the project you wish to build from, you should at minimum have a folder for the specs file, and the source code. You can then setup an english-compiler.jsonc file, which should contain all the required settings. Including the openai API key.

For obvious reasons, please do not checkin your openai API key to a public repo

The following is an example of the settings

{
	// Openai API key
	"openai_apikey": "REPLACE-WITH-YOUR-ACTUAL-KEY-AND-DO-NOT-CHECKIN",

	// Prompt caching dir, this can be used to cache and speed up the build process
    // especially when no specification (or code) changes occured
	"prompt_cache_dir": "./prompt_cache",

	// Specification directory, to scan for `*.spec.md` files
	"spec_dir": "./spec",

	// Source code output directory
	"code_dir": "./src",

	// Test code output directory (only supported for JS now)
	"test_dir": "./test",

	// Add some personality based remarks, set to false/null if you want to skip this
    // and save on token consumption (this feature is just for fun)
	"personality": "Sassy & Sarcastic"
}

Run one of our demo !

Note that the demo, include a precomputed cache of the AI compilation process, so unless you change part of the spec file. You do not need to update the openai key in the settings. Also yes, the output has some minor bugs here and there. This is a Proof-of-concept.

Demo 1 : Building a simple "twitter clone" demo

This is a simple complete application for a twitter clone, without login or authentication. Including both the UI, and the API endpoints.

Go into the demo/twitter-clone folder

Ask the AI for suggestions on a spec file

EnglishCompiler spec suggest spec/ui/index.spec.md

Build a single spec file

EnglishCompiler build file spec/core/db.spec.md

Build all spec file

EnglishCompiler build all

Demo 2 : Larger java class

This is an example for a java class, which would have been too large, and goes beyond 4000+ tokens once you include the spec and code comments. It is not possible to generate this directly via openAI api, without the tricks we have resorted to in this project.

There is only 1 file for this demostartion

Go into the demo/java-class folder

Build all spec file

EnglishCompiler build all