Proposal: use something like pkl instead of YAML

[jaanli]

Apple’s pkl (or python bindings: https://github.com/jw-y/pkl-python), or https://github.com/rails/jbuilder, or Cue could all help reduce deploy times and number of bugs.

over many mosaic framework training sessions, the common issue is that context switching is necessary: a bug due to a typo in a YAML file is only apparent in the browser, not the editor.

this can be remedied by using something like beartype does (runtime static type checking library for Python).

could a language like pkl help catch some of these bugs?

omegaconf is another example that is more heavyweight.

happy to help scope / implement this if needed, we use mosaic across @onefact.

[jheer]

I think some of this falls under #395? Feel free to share suggestions for a Python API there.

The spec is based on JSON. YAML can be a convenient way to write JSON, but you can always explore alternatives and share back your experiences.

Also note that the mosaic-spec package now supports generation of JSON schemas, which you can use to catch bugs, support autocomplete, etc for both JSON and YAML. We will be rolling out publishing of JSON schemas and public $schema urls soon!