Precisely. The first pass generated a temp file and compiled/ran it, but that lead to annoying pauses when trying to run simple scripts (probably 500ms latency?

Precisely. The first pass generated a temp file and compiled/ran it, but that lead to annoying pauses when trying to run simple scripts (probably 500ms latency? Maybe a tad more?). Yaegi cut that latency dramatically. I think you’re right that this may make it slower for larger scripts or for sufficiently large inputs, however the biggest bottleneck for me with jq isn’t performance but learning it’s language repeatedly.