I think it would be interesting to have a system where all of these representations are collected in a single, unified projection of the object which allows you

I think it would be interesting to have a system where all of these representations are collected in a single, unified projection of the object which allows you to see the object's contents, and the live object being edited would then be stored in a snapshot for the storage representation. The programming environment would then allow you to get the abstract representation by giving you the ability to traverse between the live objects, giving you the ability to navigate the entire system model end-to-end. Such a system probably requires not going through a compiler, though; it requires a Lisp/Smalltalk level of interactivity.