ELI Frontend: A Bootstrapped Keyword System

We present the ELI Frontend—a keyword compilation system built on top of the ELIstack-based intermediate representation. The frontend introduces a .kw file format thatallows new language constructs to be defined entirely in ELI source syntax, with no externaltooling or raw opcode knowledge required beyond four irreducible primitives. Compilationproceeds as a fixed-point rewriting process: the source is expanded repeatedly until no furtherreductions are possible, at which point the output is pure ELI. This model unifies whattraditional systems separate into macros, compilation passes, and runtime calls. We showthat the resulting bootstrap chain—four raw primitives at the base, arbitrary abstractionslayered above—produces a system where new language features are indistinguishable fromuser programs, and where the language naturally extends itself. We compare this model toLisp macros and term rewriting systems and argue that fixed-point rewriting constitutes anovel execution model particularly well-suited to AI-native code generation.