Isn't a text file representation -- what you and I see when we open a text editor -- already an abstraction for human consumption? They are not filesystem-level

Isn't a text file representation -- what you and I see when we open a text editor -- already an abstraction for human consumption? They are not filesystem-level storage. You can view an AST, but this is never going to supplant a textual representation of code as a lingua franca between you and me. A tool that represents ASTs is always going to be a boundary between you and me (and also, a more complex tool than a simple text editor).