OBOL A programming language in which a program is a rite. Every line costs a coin, spirits must be summoned inside a circle and licensed to leave, and a sigil only fires once you forget it. Rite Grimoire What this is OBOL treats computation the way a grimoire treats evocation: bounded, paid for, and dangerous to leave open. Under the vocabulary are four real mechanisms that most languages keep hidden or optional. The purse is a fixed budget of steps, so every rite halts. Circles are sealed scopes that only see what you pass through their gate. Spirits are the only way to define behavior, and each one has to be released explicitly or it escapes and stays escaped. Omens are values you can use before they exist. Sigils are code that runs only if its name is never read again. Named after the coin placed with the dead to pay the ferryman, and after COBOL, with the C taken off. The scroll A scroll holds any number of spirits and exactly one rite. The rite has a name and a purse. It must open with banish and close with banish before amen, or it will not be read at all. Comments begin with ~. rite "a name" purse 40 banish utter "hello from the far bank" banish amen The purse Every line that executes costs one obol. Each extra turn of a while costs one more. Asking a spirit costs its toll. When the purse is empty the rite stops mid-line: no amen, any spirit still bound goes loose, and any charged sigil stays charged, unreleased. There are no infinite loops in OBOL, only purses that run out. The most a purse can hold is 9999. Values and names Numbers, "text", yes and no, and nothing (which prints as silence). let name be … names a value; set name to … changes it. Ordinary names are lowercase. A name in capitals is a true name, and only spirits have those. utter writes a line into the record. + adds numbers and joins anything else as text. The rest: - * / mod, = != < > <= >=, and or not, and parentheses. let offering be 12 set offering to offering * 3 utter "the offering is " + offering Choosing and repeating if offering > 30 then utter "enough" otherwise utter "not enough" end repeat 3 times utter "turn " + turn end while offering > 0 set offering to offering - 10 end Circles circle … close draws a sealed scope. Nothing named outside is visible inside, except names passed through the gate, and those are shared both ways: change one inside and it is changed outside. Spirits can only be summoned inside a circle. When a circle closes, its charged sigils fire and its unlicensed spirits escape. let offering be 12 circle gate offering set offering to offering + 1 close utter offering ~ 13 Spirits OBOL has no functions. Behavior is written as a spirit, above or below the rite, and every call is a request with a price. A spirit has a true name, a toll, and one or more offices. An office body sees only its own argument and whatever the spirit has kept; it cannot see the rite. keep stores something for the length of one summoning. answer returns. spirit ANDROMALIUS toll 3 office count with n keep total as n * 7 answer "seven times " + n + " is " + total office remind answer "the last number I held was " + total seal Inside a circle: summon NAME, then ask NAME to office argument, then license NAME. If the purse can't cover the toll, or the office doesn't exist, the spirit refuses and the answer is silence. Wrap a complex argument in parentheses. A spirit still bound when its circle closes, or when the purse runs out, is loose. Loose spirits persist on this page between rites and can't be summoned again, only drawn back with recall NAME inside a circle, and only if the scroll holds that spirit's seal.

Another creature feature made by Claude Opus 5.5