Reading through the article, it sounds similar to what most lisp compilers do: read source files into a data-structure, transform that structure in various ways

Reading through the article, it sounds similar to what most lisp compilers do: read source files into a data-structure, transform that structure in various ways to some kind of IR and then generate machine code from that IR. They generally do this the first time a file is loaded and generate a “fast load” file to speed up later attempts to load the file. This sounds pretty similar, except there’s no fast load file.