Sorry to leave a message here but I didnt find another way to contact you.

You have a nice write-up of AST tools...
I just updated my pyRegurgitator[1] and thought you might be interested.
It nows include a python to XML converter that can be lose-less converted back to python.
I guess it is a better approach to manipulate some kind of XML than AST.

[1] https://github.com/schettino72/pyRegurgitator

Given

As a bash user I want to run a python package

When

pym and kat are installed into python

Then

This bash command
python -m kat -h
should be equivalent to
pym kat -h

pym is UI agnostic, capable of presentation between pipes, on a console, GUI, web page, or directly from Python. Development shall concentrate on Python first, console second, with others trailing. Full use should be made of available visual cues, such as colour, position, movement, ...

This is a high priority - I do not have a lot of time for coding personal projects such as pym, the sooner it is “good enough” to be usable daily for editing other programs, but quickly fixable, then the more development it will actually get.

Such has been my experience with my dot files - tighter the REPL, the more code gets written

An editor should be the first step of a REPL: reading ideas from the coder and passing them on to an evaluator, and incidentally to a disk. It is rarely an end in itself, and should not get in the way of the larger cycle. Hence an editor should be quick, and more efficient of the coder’s time than other factors. pym should look for the flow of ideas in the iterations of the REPL, noting steps such as when tests start to pass, and so development moves on.

Given

As a pythonista I need to provide fstring templates in method's docstrings, #16

When

There are too many methods, because the grammars are so profuse in their identifications

Then

We should generate templates from the grammars

Given

As a pythonista I need to write HTML #15

When

I need to write a structured language

So I need template for each language

Then

I should add fstrings (as docstrings?) to each method in a visitor

Given

As a Python dev I need to write some HTML

When

HTML is too horrible for editting in vim

Then

I should use Python to wite HTML instead

pym is inherently a modal editor, and one is not directly editing plain text. Some parts of the program will look more like plain text than others, e.g. names. But each structure in the tree uses its own specialised sub-editor, e.g. there is a different editor for an else branch than for a function definition than for a function. pym should transition between such editors unnoticeably to the user, not needing any “start loop here” instructions, although they could be explicitly given. Command/insert mode might toggle on the CAPS LOCK key.

Structured text is ever a snapshot from a flow of ideas the coder has about the program being created. On a good day the ideas flow toward some runnable tree which works, but on a bad day they chase around random forests, crashing blindly into insects. It is important to store correct program text, more important to grasp ideas behind that text, and most important to grok the flow.