---
audience: engineers
summary: The canonical ScaiCore language reference, organized as twelve chapters covering
  lexical rules through canonical examples.
title: Language reference
path: reference/language
status: published
---

> **Canonical source.** This page and its child chapters are now the source of truth for the ScaiCore language. The earlier copy at `docs/SCAICORE-LANGUAGE-DICTIONARY-v0.1.md` in the repo is a historical snapshot kept for archaeological reference; edits should land here.

The language reference is organized as twelve chapters. Read them in order on a first pass — each chapter builds on the previous. Jump to a specific chapter when you need a fact about syntax, types, a block, or an API.

## Part I — Reference

- [Lexical rules](./language/lexical-rules) — characters, tokens, identifiers, literals, comments.
- [Syntax fundamentals](./language/syntax-fundamentals) — block structure, expressions vs statements, operator precedence.
- [Type system](./language/type-system) — primitives, compound types, enums, unions.
- [Top-level constructs](./language/top-level-constructs) — `@core`, `@flow`, `@transformer`, `@evaluator`, `@pipeline`, `@test`.
- [Core declaration blocks](./language/core-declaration-blocks) — `@config`, `@memory`, `@constraints`, `@triggers`, `@llm`, `@plugins`, `@instance`.
- [Execution blocks](./language/execution-blocks) — the fourteen block kinds that make up a flow body.
- [Pipeline operators](./language/pipeline-operators) — `|>`, `|?>`, `|*>`, `|~>`.
- [Statements](./language/statements) — what's legal inside `@rigid` and `@debug`.
- [Memory and reference APIs](./language/memory-and-reference-api) — `memory.*` and `reference.*` at runtime.
- [Module system](./language/module-system) — imports, visibility, multi-file flows.
- [Standard library](./language/standard-library) — built-in functions, types, and methods.

## Part II — Examples

- [Canonical examples](./language/examples) — three worked flows from end to end: invoice processor, customer support agent, content pipeline.