Why ARKlight

A narrower tool on purpose.

The idea

You write ordinary Python. ARKlight discovers and executes that authoring code at build time, turns it into an intermediate representation, validates it against a closed vocabulary, and compiles it to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The browser never runs Python.

Who it is for

Python developers who want a website without learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, npm and a separate frontend ecosystem just to build a page.

Is this React in Python?

No. React is a JavaScript library and frontend runtime built for flexible application logic. ARKlight is deliberately narrower: a compiler with a closed vocabulary, where routing, validation and CSS are settled at build time and the runtime is reserved for what genuinely needs a browser.

What that closed vocabulary buys you

• Predictable output: the compiler knows which components and behaviors can exist.
• No arbitrary JavaScript expressions evaluated at runtime.
• Build-time errors instead of broken pages.
• User-defined components that expand during compilation and do not ship to the browser.

Honest limits

Know these before you commit:

• There is no server, database, auth or accounts layer.
• There is no general fetch or HTTP primitive.
• There is no live charting library. Charts are pre-rendered images, and Meter and Progress cover gauge-style numbers.
• There is no iOS target.
• Hand-written JavaScript is possible only through a few registered experimental escape hatches, such as script-extension.

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