I should point out that clojure-android provides exactly that. The tools are not currently maintained and it is quite difficult to get a development environment

I should point out that clojure-android provides exactly that. The tools are not currently maintained and it is quite difficult to get a development environment set up these days, but once running, it works very well. It's strange from my perspective to see REPLs as a separate mode of operation. Yes, there's a little overhead, and it's something you might want to strip or disable from a production build, but the overhead is small in the context of a modern application language. Contrast with something like Electron. This style of development makes the feedback loop between the programmer's mental model of how things work and a reality check extremely tight. It's one of those things like TDD that often changes what kind of programs you write.