Simple
Predictable
Discoverable
An agent-first programming language
A minimalistic, safe-by-construction language designed exclusively for AI agents to generate and execute small programs that implement API‑calling logic for enterprise systems.
Written by the agent, run on your server
An agent writes a small program and sends it to the runtime, which interprets it server-side, right next to your APIs, with no sandbox, no container, no VM, because every safety guarantee is built into the language.
The language is the sandbox.
None of this is possible in a modern, general-purpose language, so Neander deliberately isn’t one. Like the spare, limited languages of computing’s early days, it can do very little — and the less a language can do, the less can go wrong.
The language name references the Neanderthal: a design from an earlier era — adapted to the modern world. That heritage comes down to those same three principles:
- Simple: All Neander does is orchestrate APIs. One call, a loop over the result, some conditional logic, another call. That’s it. Nothing fancy. Agents write the code, not humans, so no syntactic sugar, either.
- Predictable: Every program is guaranteed to terminate by design. No infinite loops, no recursion, no hangs. No file I/O, no sockets, no system access.
- Discoverable: An agent can find out about the available APIs at runtime. It can even learn the language itself. No upfront documentation, no out-of-band integration step.
Who this site is for
Humans. Engineers evaluating whether Neander meets their requirements for an agent interface to their systems, and developers looking to embed a runtime of their own. Start with the Overview and the Specification.
A reference runtime implementation will be released very soon.
Who this site is not for
Agents. This site is not an input for agents, and a running agent should never be pointed at it, least of all at a hosted copy of the Reference. A Neander runtime is self-contained: it hands the agent everything it needs in-band, the Reference included. That copy matches the runtime’s exact version; a fixed URL may not, and an agent that learns the language from the wrong Reference fails silently.
Manual coders. No getting-started, no tutorials, no how-tos. Agents author Neander; humans host it.