Mako general-purpose backend plan

Source brief: General_Purpose_Backend_Language_Vision.md.

Mako's product contract is:

A simple, safe, fast, and versatile language for backend software, cloud infrastructure, networking systems, developer tools, databases, and high-performance services.

Telecom and realtime systems are important proving grounds, but not the whole identity.

Implementation Ladder

Wave	Goal	Concrete outcomes
1	Backend app surface	Router helpers (`http_route_match`, `http_route_param`) started; middleware pattern, validation, auth/session seeds, graceful shutdown, health checks
2	API protocols	REST/OpenAPI metadata, GraphQL seed, gRPC polish, WebSockets, SSE, streaming RPC
3	Data layer	Pooling, transactions, prepared statements, migrations, typed SQL checks, PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQLite/Redis first
4	CLI/devtools	Subcommands, config files, secrets/env, shell completion, terminal formatting
5	Runtime trust	Stronger structured concurrency, cancellation/timeouts, leak/deadlock diagnostics, scheduler introspection
6	Observability/debugging	Structured logs, metrics, tracing/OpenTelemetry, CPU/memory/alloc profiling, stack traces
7	Cloud/infrastructure	Operator/controller patterns, sidecars, service discovery, container tooling, monitoring agents
8	Systems/data/realtime tracks	Storage primitives, zero-copy views, ring buffers, SIP/RTP/SRTP/WebRTC, AI inference hooks
9	Toolchain maturity	Docs/tests/bench/coverage/audit/profiler/debugger/LSP as one coherent official toolchain
10	Portability/deploy	Static binary defaults, cross-compile polish, minimal containers, serverless/edge/WASM, plugin/ABI support

Non-Negotiables

Mako-owned syntax is required: familiar enough to learn quickly, but not a clone of any single existing language.
Simplicity and fast iteration stay central.
No mandatory GC.
Safe defaults: no null, checked conversions, explicit unsafe, typed errors.
Fine-grained ownership control exists, but normal backend services should not require lifetime expertise.
Raw escape hatches remain available for systems work.
Compile-time generation should replace heavy runtime reflection where possible.

Success Bar

Mako should be comfortable for both:

a beginner shipping a small API or CLI, and
an expert building a database, proxy, compiler, distributed runtime, or realtime protocol system.