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ADP-001 — Core Types and Bytes as Values

• Status: Approved & Implemented
• Deciders: Poppy Team
• Phase: Wave 1 (P00-G13 / P00-G15)

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Context

The Aipo language required a clear strategy for handling raw binary byte streams, collection slicing, and bounded mathematical clamping operations.

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Decisions Taken

1. Bytes as a First-Class Value Type:

   • Bytes is represented in the VM as a contiguous buffer of unsigned 8-bit integers, exhibiting value semantics and reference counting.
   • Provides strongly-typed read and write operations with explicit endianness (read_u16_le, write_u32_be).

2. Tolerant Slicing:

   • Collection slicing syntax (collection[start..end]) silently clamps out-of-range slice boundaries to the actual length of the collection, avoiding unnecessary runtime panics during safe read-only operations.

3. Inverted Bounds Handling in clamp:

   • Invocations of clamp(val, min, max) where min > max trigger an explicit domain fault rather than yielding corrupted or undefined outputs.