# pixie-lang/pixie

A small, fast, native lisp with "magical" powers

Repository: https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/pixie-lang-pixie
Language: Python
License: GPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Last push: 2020-10-28T14:02:03+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4359, "days_push": 2135, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2358, forks 127 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:40.730054+00:00)

## What it is
Pixie is a small, fast, native Lisp language with its own virtual machine, written in RPython and featuring a tracing JIT, immutable data structures, and a Clojure-inspired standard library. It is suitable for general scripting and shell use and ships with the pixie-vm interpreter executable and the dust build tool.

## Use cases
- write shell scripts in a lisp
- learn a clojure-inspired lisp
- run a lightweight lisp interpreter with a jit
- experiment with immutable data structures and transducers
- script with easy ffi to c libraries

## When to choose
- you want a small native lisp with a jit and clojure-like stdlib
- you need easy ffi for scripting system libraries
- you want to study a language implemented in rpython

## When to avoid
- you need a production-stable language - it is pre-alpha and largely inactive
- you need jvm or clr interop - pixie runs on its own vm
- you need long-term support or an active community

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: abandoned
- function: interpreter, programming-language, cli
- domain: programming-languages, developer-tools
- platform: windows, cross-platform, cli
- tags: lisp, rpython, clojure-inspired, jit, functional-programming, shell-scripting, pre-alpha, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- pixie-lang/pixie (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:40.730054+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:36:15.546044+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/pixie-lang/pixie (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:40.730054+00:00, sha 1769d84f175d)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.