I was challenging your "Go is not set up to have a REPL" assertion. we are in violent agreement about the (non) "REPL-ness" of _gore_ and the fact that "just keep compiling a module incrementally" is a dead end.

I don't see how reimplementing Go in Go but with a REPL (on top of, let's say, a SSA interpreter) is a Go-like REPL at best and not just a Go REPL. Could you expand a bit?

AFAICT, once one has a Go interpreter (the x/go/ssa is basically just that), implementing a REPL is "just" providing a program counter to the interactive interpreter layer, together with the ability to modify that PC... (many details have been dropped on the floor, of course)