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Awesome Common Lisp

A curated list of awesome Common Lisp frameworks, libraries and other shiny stuff.

3k stars221 forks888 entriesLast push Sep 29, 2026 (today)License Other

This page lists names, links and short descriptions. The original list on GitHub is the source and belongs to its authors.

Agents

Autolith

a live, self-modifying Common Lisp agent.

Around the OpenAI API

openai-openapi-client

semi-automatically generated Openapi client updated frequently from the official Openapi specification. AGPL-3.; available on Ultralisp.

cl-completions

LLM completions.; makes it easy to create GPT functions in Common Lisp.; Ollama support.

cl-embeddings

LLM embeddings.

cl-chroma

the vector DB interface.

Caten

Deep Learning Compiler based on Polyhedral Compiler and Light-weight IRs, and Optimizing Pattern Matcher, written in Common Lisp

MCP servers

cl-MCP

MCP for Common Lisp.; provides a newline‑delimited JSON‑RPC 2.0 transport over stdio or TCP, a small protocol layer (initialize, ping, tools/list, tools/call), and a REPL tool that evaluates forms and returns the last value.

40ants-MCP

a framework for building Model Context Protocol servers in Common Lisp.

mcp-lisp

Common Lisp SDK for MCP (2025-11-25) with full conformance (44/44 checks) and limited A2A support. Supports stdio and SSE transports, tools, resources, prompts, structured errors, and access logging. MIT.

Lisply MCP

a generic Node.js wrapper meant to work with pretty much any language backend which can support "eval" and http .; By default, it comes configured to work with an existing reference-implementation backend CL-based container image which it will pull and run on-demand.

cl-tron-mcp

MCP wrap around the Slime Swank library. Provides discoverable access to Swank commands, including control of the Swank debugging sessions and code hot-reload. Currently 90+ tools. Tested on SBCL and ECL.

Machine Learning

MGL

a machine learning library for backpropagation neural networks, boltzmann machines, gaussian processes and more. MIT.; some parts originally contributed by Ravenpack International.; used by its author to win the Higgs Boson Machine Learning Challenge.; more about the author: he also won the Google…

In 2 lists

clml

originally developed by Mathematicl Systems Inc., a Japanese company. With a tutorial. LLGPL.

antik

a foundation for scientific and engineering computation in Common Lisp. GPL. Also mgl-mat and LLA.

llama.cl

implementation of Llama inference operations. MIT.; "Enables researchers and developers to explore LLM techniques within the Common Lisp ecosystem, leveraging the language's capabilities for interactive development and integration with symbolic AI systems."

Natural Language Processing

sparser

A natural language understanding system for English. Eclipse.

cl-nlp

Natural language processing toolset. Apache2.0.

babel2

A Fluid Construction Grammar implementation, computational framework, and unification-based grammar formalism Apache2.0.

Expert Systems

Lisa

a production-quality, forward-chaining expert system shell featuring an optimized implementation of Charles Forgy's Rete algorithm, a highly efficient solution to the difficult many-to-many pattern matching problem. MIT.

WouldWork

solve classical planning and constraint satisfaction problems without extensive programming experience. BSD_3Clause.

Educational

PAIP-lisp

Lisp code for the textbook "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming".

In 2 lists

AIMA-lisp

Common Lisp implementation of algorithms from Russell and Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence - A Modern Approach".

microgpt

A Common Lisp port of @karpathy microgpt.py — the most atomicimplementation of a GPT with a hand-written scalar autograd engine.

Audio

OpenMusic

visual programming / computer-aided composition environment. GPL3. Developped at IRCAM, France.

OM7

a new implementation of the OpenMusic visual programming and computer-aided composition environment including a number of improvements on graphical interface, computational mode, and connection to external software libraries. GPL3.; an extension: rq - a library for rhythm transcription in…

Incudine

Music/DSP programming environment for Common Lisp. Useful to design software synthesizers or sound plugins from scratch. It is also a compositional tool that allows to produce high quality sounds controllable at the sample level, defining and redefining the digital signal processors and the…

CLM

Common Lisp Music is a music synthesis and signal processing package in the Music V family. It provides much the same functionality as Stk, Csound, SuperCollider, PD, CMix, cmusic, and Arctic — a collection of functions that create and manipulate sounds, aimed primarily at composers (in CLM's case…

common-tones

a fork of CLM5 with modern Lisp (ASDF, cffi…). BSD_3Clause.

Slippery Chicken

Algorithmic composition library which outputs Midi, Common Music Notation, pdf-score via Lilypond and sound via Common Lisp Music. GPL3.

In 2 lists

with documentation:

Common Music

the repository of an ancient version of Common Music (version 2.12.0), the presumably last version which ran on Common Lisp dating from around 2007-09, before work on Common Music shifted to (scheme-based) cm3.; note: old project but working.

cm-incudine

extends Common Music 2 with realtime capabilities. GPL2.

cl-patterns

a system for composing music via Lisp code, heavily inspired by SuperCollider’s patterns system, with aims to implement much of it, but in a more robust, expressive, consistent, reflective, and lispy way. Audio output through SuperCollider, with preliminary support for Incudine, and MIDI through…

Music

A framework for musical expression in Lisp with a focus on music theory (built from scratch, unrelated to Common Music).

Harmony

A real-time sound processing and playback system. zlib.; "provides you with audio processing tools as well as an audio server to play back music, sfx, and so forth."; using cl-mixed for the mixing and sound processing library.

easy-audio

a collection of audio decoders and metadata readers.

scheduler

The time based musical event scheduler for Common Lisp. Apache2.0.

Common Music Notation

Common Music Notation (CMN) provides a package of functions to hierarchically describe a musical score. Public domain.

osc

an implementation of the Open Sound Protocol. LGPL2.1.

cl-mpg123

, cl-opus (OGG/Opus), cl-vorbis (OGG/Vorbis), cl-SoLoud, cl-out123 (libout123), cl-flac

csound

A sound and music computing system. Includes CFFI and FFI interfaces for Common Lisp.

In 2 lists

cl-collider

A SuperCollider client for CommonLisp. With a tutorial and live coding demos. Public domain.

cl-openal

bindings for the OpenAL audio library. Public domain.

Build Systems

ASDF

Another System Definition Facility; a build system for Common Lisp. Expat. Quicklisp (see library manager) uses ASDF under the hood.

asdf-viz

a tool to visualize the library dependencies of ASDF systems, the call graph of a function and the class inheritances. LLGPL.

modularize

A modularization framework for Common Lisp. zlib.; provides a common interface to segregate major application components.; for instance, by adding module definition options you can introduce mechanisms to tie modules together in functionality, hook into each other and so on.; acts as a wrapper…

asdf-linguist

Extensions for ASDF for compiling various languages and running various preprocessing tools on files in your project. Expat.; Sass, LESS, Myth, C, C++, Fortran, CSS/JS minifiers, ParensScript, Make, CMake, org-mode, pandoc, dot, diita…; currently archived and unmaintained.

asdf-dependency-traverser

a small utility for traversing the dependency tree of an ASDF system. Zlib.

APL

April

The APL programming language (a subset thereof) compiling to Common Lisp. Replace hundreds of lines of number-crunching code with a single line of APL. Apache2.

C, C++

C-mera

a source-to-source compiler that utilizes Lisp's macro system for meta programming of C-like languages. GPL3.

lispc

a powerful "lispsy" macrolanguage for C. MIT.

with-c-syntax

a fun package which introduces the C language syntax into Common Lisp. (Yes, this package is not for practical coding, I think.) WTFPL Licence.

ecrepl

an interactive REPL for the C language. BSD_2Clause.

Software-Evolution-Library

The SEL enables the programmatic modification and evaluation of software (C/C++ support using Clang, compiled assembler, and linked ELF binaries). GPL3.

vacietis

C to Common Lisp compiler. LGPL3.

Cicili

C generator macro-driven language. GPL3.0.; "can use lisp libraries to produce compile time content like html, json, sql, ... for inside C generated code".

Cryptography

Ironclad

A library of crypto functions for Common Lisp. Not considered secure, but is still useful for the message digest functions. Expat.

crypto-shortcuts

Collection of common crypto shortcuts. zlib.

cl-ssh-keys

Common Lisp system for generating and parsing of OpenSSH keys. BSD_3Clause.

cl-bcrypt

Common Lisp system for parsing and generating bcrypt password hashes. BSD_3Clause.

gpgme

(GnuPG Made Easy) is the standard library to access GnuPG functions from programming languages. It provides an official Common Lisp system.

gpgme lisp sources

(not in Quicklisp). GPL2.

cl-frugal-uuid

Common Lisp UUID library with zero dependencies. MIT.

Cryptocurrencies

bitcoin-core-rpc

a (hopefully) complete Bitcoin Core RPC client. AGPL-3.0+

bp

Bitcoin Protocol components in Common Lisp. MIT.

peercoin-blockchain-parser

parse the blockchain contained in a file and export some of its data to a text file, a SQL script or a database. It can also create a database using the RPC of a Peercoin daemon as source of data instead of a blockchain file. LGPL3. Not in Quicklisp.

peercoin-calculator

This program gives you the probability of generating a POS or POW block within 10 minutes, 24 hours, 31 days, 90 days and 1 year, as well as the reward that can be expected. GUI in Qt. GPL3. Not in Quicklisp.

peercoin-vote

A voting system based on data from the blockchain (addresses and balances). GPL3. Not in Quicklisp.

stacks-api

a Stacks API client. AGPL-3.0

Database

postmodern

A library for interacting with PostgreSQL. zlib.

cl-dbi

A database-independent interface for Common Lisp. LLGPL.

sxql

A DSL for generating SQL. 3-clause BSD.; NEW as of Oct, 2025: a composable query builder. Queries become first-class values that can be derived, combined, and reused without side effects.

cl-sqlite

Bindings for SQLite. Public domain.

cl-yesql

SQL statements live in their own files, in SQL syntax, and are imported into Lisp as functions. You are not limited to the features a DSL supports. Based on Clojure's Yesql. MIT.

endatabas

Schemaless SQL document database with full history. AGPL-3.0.; built in Common Lisp and Rust, in development.

ORMs

mito

An ORM for Common Lisp with migrations, relationships and PostgreSQL support BSD_3Clause.; works best coupled with SxQL and its Query Composer.

mitho-auth

, a mixin class for use authorization

mito-attachment

, a mixin class for file management outside of RDBMS.

clsql

An SQL database with a Common Lisp interface. LLGPL.

dbd-oracle

an Oracle database driver for CL-DBI. LLGPL.

datafly

A lightweight database library. 3-clause BSD.

Persistent object databases

original repository

ubiquitous

A library providing easy-to-use persistent configuration storage. zlib.

cl-prevalence

in-memory database system. Implementation of Object Prevalence, in which business objects are kept live in memory and transactions are journaled for system recovery. github fork. LLGPL.; See also cl-prevalence-multimaster, to syncronize multiple cl-prevalence systems state.

Graph databases

AllegroGraph

a high-performance, multi-model (document and graph), entity-event knowledge graph technology.; Proprietary, with a free version of a limit of 5 million RDF triples.; with a hosted version; AllegroGraph 8.0 - "incorporates Large Language Model (LLM) components directly into SPARQL along with…

cl-agraph

, a minimal client for AllegroGraph.

neo4cl

a library for interacting with Neo4J. Sends Cypher queries to a Neo4J server, and decodes the responses into something useful for processing in CL. Apache2.; and maybe: cl-neo4j - a thin neo4j RESTFUL client interface.

vivace-graph

graph database & Prolog implementation. Takes design inspiration from CouchDB, neo4j and AllegroGraph. It implements an ACID-compliant object graph model with user-defined indexes and map-reduce views. It also implements a master / slave replication scheme for redundancy and horizontal read…; "I…

Ariadne

A graph database in Common Lisp with full W3C SPARQL 1.1 and SHACL conformance, Gremlin-style traversal, RDF import/export, property graph support, inference rules, graph analytics, and Graphviz visualization.; Built with LLMs.

restagraph

an app that dynamically generates REST APIs for a Neo4j database, using a schema defined within the database. GPL3.

Key-value databases

scalaxy

Multi-purpose cloud ready distributed database. MIT.

https://scalaxy.org/

lmdb

Bindings to LMDB, the Lightning Memory-mapped Database, an ACID key-value database with MultiVersion Concurrency Control.

cl-redis

Redis client. Expat.

cl-ndbapi

bindings to the C++ NDB API of RonDB, "the world's fastest key value store", by Dydra. GPLv2.

Other DB wrappers

cl-memcached

Fast, thread-safe interface to the Memcached object caching system. Expat.

cl-disque

Disque client. 3-clause BSD.

cl-rethinkdb

RethinkDB client. Expat.

cl-mango

A minimalist CouchDB 2.x database client. BSD_3Clause.; See also clouchdb - Library for interacting with CouchDB. FreeBSD.

cl-duckdb

Common Lisp CFFI wrapper around the DuckDB C API. MIT.

In 2 lists

cl-bunny

Common Lisp RabbitMQ client based on IOLib. MIT.

Migration tools

cl-migratum

a system which provides facilities for performing database schema migrations, designed to work with various databases. BSD_3Clause.

postmodern-passenger-pigeon

a migration manager for postmodern. No licence specified.

To third parties

dyna

an AWS DynamoDB ORM. MIT.

cl-influxdb

an interface to the Time Series Database InfluxDB. MIT.

In 2 lists

cl-remizmq

ZeroMQ sockets, messages, timers, atomics, and proxies.; low-level and high-level APIs. Tested with libzmq 5.2.5, any v4.x and v5.x should work, v3.x may as well.

coalton-zmq

ZeroMQ interface for Coalton.; "It's complete enough to be useful for building apps that use ZeroMQ". Many of the official ZeroMQ examples are implemented.

Tools

pgloader

a data loading tool for PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL Licence.; obligatory blog post: Why is pgloader so much faster? (hint: it was re-written from Python to Common Lisp)

CSV

cl-csv

A library for parsing CSV files. 3-clause BSD.

example blog post

.

cl-decimals

Decimal number parser and formatter. Public domain.

auto-text

automatic (encoding, end of line, column width, csv delimiter etc) detection for text files. MIT. See also inquisitor for detection of asian and far eastern languages.

csv-validator

Validates tabular CSV data using predefined validations, inspired from its Python homologue "Great Expectations". BSD_3Clause.

JSON

jzon

a correct, safe and fast JSON parser. MIT.; jzon is the only CL JSON library which correctly declines all invalid inputs per the official JSON test suite and accepts all valid inputs per that suite.; it doesn't crash on invalid input (jsown), doesn't choke on large datasets (Jonathan), and more.;…

shasht

Common Lisp JSON reading and writing for the Kzinti. MIT.; "Shasht is one of the two new libraries that I particularly like and is already in quicklisp. It is fast, it handles null correctly, it encodes CLOS objects, structures and hash-tables. It can also do incremental encoding." Sabra Crolleton.

cl-json

A highly customizable JSON encoder and decoder. MIT.; "cl-json and yason are still the work horses if you need fine control, but speed is not their forte." @sabracrolleton

parcom/json

An extension to parcom for simple, fast, no-dependency JSON parsing.

NJSON

Parser-agnostic JSON indexing (with JSON Pointer support), destructuring, and validation framework. BSD.

json-mop

A metaclass for bridging CLOS and JSON objects. MIT.; depends on YASON; for JSON libraries that don't do it natively (jzon, shasht and cl-json are able to encode CLOS objects to JSON out of the box, and cl-json has the ability to decode JSON objects into a "fluid-class" CLOS object.)

cl-json-pointer

A JSON Pointer implementation. MIT.

cl-jwk

Common Lisp system for decoding public JSON Web Keys (JWK). BSD License.

JOSE

A JSON Object Signing and Encryption (JOSE) implementation for Common Lisp. BSD_2Clause.

cl-jsonpath

A JSONPath implementation for Common Lisp with 99% test compliance and complete real-world compatibility. MIT. With AI inside.

cl-json-utils

querying JSON, inspired by JSONPath by lisp-ier.; jsonpath: $.store.book[*].author, json-utils: (query $ "store" "book" :wild "author")

pantry

client library for the Pantry JSON storage service. BSD.

TOML

parcom/json

An extension to parcom for simple, fast, no-dependency JSON parsing.

clop

A 1.0-compliant TOML parser.

XML

CXML

XML parser and serializer, with a range of extension libraries. LLGPL.; 👍 has an incremental parser, allowing to parse big files.; see the FXML fork, with fixes and new features. You should use it if your are parsing potentially ill-formed or malicious XML, or if you need to use Klacks with…

Plump

A lenient XML parser. zlib.

parcom/json

An extension to parcom for simple, fast, no-dependency JSON parsing.

xpath

(homepage - Implementation of the XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0. BSD_2Clause.

s-xml

A basic parser. LLGPL.

xmls

A small, simple, non-validating XML parser. 3-clause BSD.

cl-feedparser

A Common Lisp (RSS, Atom) feed parser. LLGPL

Buildnode

A common lisp library to ease interaction with CXML-dom, such as building Excel spreadsheets. BSD.

cl-excel

a modern and powerful Common Lisp library for reading and writing Microsoft Excel .xlsx and LibreOffice .ods files. MIT.; "allow developers to handle complex spreadsheets with minimal code while maintaining memory efficiency for large datasets."; full writing support.; robust format detection.

YAML

cl-yaml

a YAML parser and emitter built on top of libyaml. MIT.; an active fork: cl-RemiYaml with a few fixes. Not a drop-in replacement.

yamson

Fast YAML and JSON parsers for Common Lisp (not yet emitters). Apache2.0.

Data Structures

str

a modern, simple and consistent string manipulation library. MIT.

rope

Immutable Ropes for Common Lisp. MIT.; see also: ropes in Sycamore.

trivial-extensible-sequences

Portability library for the extensible sequences protocol (SBCL documentation). zlib.

listopia

a list manipulation library inspired by Haskell's Data.List. LLGPL.

nonempty

Non-empty collections for Common Lisp. LGPL3.

FSet

A functional, set-theoretic collections data structure library. LLGPL.; defines four major types: seqs (sequences), maps (hash-tables), sets and bags (like sets, but they remember the number of times each member has been added to it). Now includes JSON support in system FSet/Jzon.

sycamore

a fast, purely functional data structure library. BSD_3Clause.; comparison: FSet vs. Sycamore

modf

a setf-like macro for functional programming.

cl-hash-util

Hash-table creation, access, and manipulation utilities. MIT.

hash-set

a convenience library implementing hash sets on top of CL hash tables The Unlicense

cl-competitive

Common Lisp algorithms collection for competitive programming. Public domain, CCO or MIT.

cl-permutation

Permutations and permutation groups in Common Lisp. BSD_3Clause.

bst

Binary Search Tree. GPL3.

pileup

a portable, performant, and thread-safe binary heap for Common Lisp. MIT.

cl-freelock

thread-safe, lock-free queues optimized for different use cases and hardware. The library offers three queue types, each designed for specific concurrency patterns and performance requirements.; On systems with many cores, cl-freelock demonstrates up to 3.2x performance improvements over competing…

cl-data-structures

a portable collection of data structures (mutable and immutable) and streaming algorithms (aggregations, group-by and so on, mainly dicts and sequences, with some statistical functions). BSD.; sequences, sets, queues, dictionaries

cl-containers

an extensive library of data structures and utilities - queues, trees, heaps, doubly-linked lists, sets, bags,... MIT; and a "standard interface so that they are simpler to use and so that changing design decisions becomes significantly easier".

cl-ctrie

lock-free, concurrent, key/value index with efficient memory-mapped persistence and fast transient storage models. MIT.

bitfield

Efficiently represent several finite sets or small integers as a single non-negative integer. MIT.

bit-smasher

Common Lisp library for handling bit vectors, bit vector arithmetic, and type conversions. MIT.

access

Consistent and nested access to most common data structures. BSD_3Clause.

Pretty printing tree data structures in Common Lisp

(as a Jupyter notebook)

Docker images

cl-docker-images

Docker images for ABCL, CCL, ECL, and SBCL on Windows (amd64) and Alpine and Debian (amd64, arm64, arm/v7) BSD_2Clause.

base-lisp-image

base Docker image for Common Lisp projects with SBCL or CCL and the latest ASDF, Qlot and Roswell.

40ants/setup-lisp

GitHub Action to Setup Common Lisp tools.; updates ASDF, installs Qlot, installs Roswell; for multiple implementations; for Ubuntu, OSX and Windows.; Example use: Trial's CI

fukamachi/dockerfiles

Dockerfiles for Common Lisp programming. Roswell, SBCL, CCL.

archlinux-cl

Docker Arch Linux image with Common Lisp implementations (7 to this day). MIT.

docker-lisp-gamedev

A Docker image containing tools necessary for Common Lisp game development and deployment. Comes in Linux and Windows variety. Thoroughly tested via CI.

C

CFFI

Portable, easy-to-use C foreign function interface. Expat.

cffi-ops

helps write concise CFFI-related code.

cffi-objects

enables fast and convenient interoperation with foreign objects.

cl-autowrap

Automatically parses header files into CFFI definitions. FreeBSD.

cl-bindgen

A command line tool and library for creating Common Lisp language bindings from C header files. MIT.

cl-gobject-introspection

Gobject Introspection FFI. Automatic bindings to call into the C library. BSD. Generate a lisp interface with gir2cl. LGPL3.

cl-cxx-jit

Common Lisp and C++ interoperation with JIT. MIT.

Clojure

ABCLJ

dead easy Clojure to Common lisp interop. EPL-2.0.

Cloture

Clojure in Common Lisp.

clj-con

Clojure-style concurrency operations in Common Lisp. MIT.

clj-re

Clojure-style regular expression functions.

clj-arrows

Clojure-compatible threading/transformation/arrow macros for Common Lisp.

with-redefs

enables rebinding of global functions, inspired by Clojure's with-redefs.

cl-oju

a few idioms, mostly relating to sequences, that I miss when writing Common Lisp. MIT.

Erlang

CLERIC

a Common Lisp Erlang Interface. An implementation of the Erlang distribution protocol, comparable with erl_interface and jinterface. MIT.

Java

open-ldk

A Java JIT Compiler and Runtime in Common Lisp. GPL3.0. (Work In Progress); "bridges the gap between Java and Common Lisp by incrementally translating Java bytecode into Lisp, which is then compiled into native machine code for execution. This unique approach allows Java classes to be seamlessly…

FOIL

Rich Hickey's Foreign Object Interface for Lisp to access the JVM and the CLI/CLR.

Objective-C

cl-nextstep

Cocoa binding for Common Lisp on macOS.

objc-lisp-bridge

A portable reader and bridge for interacting with Objective-C and Cocoa. MIT.

cocoas

A toolkit library to help deal with CoreFoundation, Cocoa, and objc. zlib.

Python

burgled-batteries

A bridge between Python and Common Lisp. The goal is that Lisp programs can use Python libraries. Not available on Quicklisp. MIT.

cl4py

The library cl4py (pronounce as clappy) allows Python programs to call Common Lisp libraries. MIT.

py4cl

A library that allows Common Lisp code to access Python libraries. It is basically the inverse of cl4py. MIT.; its fork py4cl2, at first less stable, now more developped and faster.

py4cl2-cffi

CFFI based alternative to py4cl2.; "When capable, the CFFI approach can be a 50 times faster than py4cl2."

cl-python

an implementation of Python in Common Lisp. LLGPL, not under active development.

.Net Core

Bike

a cross-platform .Net Core interface. MIT.

Emacs Lisp

CEDAR

an advance interactive development environment aiming to be Emacs compatible with all the features that come with it. Stalled.

CLOCC's elisp.lisp

Emacs Lisp in Common Lisp.; implementation of the Emacs Lisp language as a Common Lisp package. [1999]; does not attempt to reimplement the library of functions provided in Emacs to manipulate buffers and other related objects, so it focuses on the "pure" Emacs Lisp language; but it was able to…

Game Development

Trial

Trial is an OpenGL game engine with a heavy focus on modularity. It is supposed to provide a large toolkit of useful bits and pieces from which you can create a game. Custom: zlib with a political clause added.; the Kandria game is built with Trial.

claw-raylib

Fully auto-generated Common Lisp bindings to Raylib and Raygui using claw and cffi-object. Apache 2.0.

raylib

(2025) - Hand-written bindings to Raylib for improved performance and smaller dependency footprint. MPL-2.0.

trivial-gamekit

With this small framework you would be able to make simple 2D games: draw basic geometric forms, images and text, play sounds and listen to mouse and keyboard input. MIT.

Xelf

Extensible game library. Not available on Quicklisp. GNU LGPL2.1.

eon

An easy-to-use but flexible game framework based on Raylib for Common Lisp. Apache2.0.

cl-gamepad

Access to gamepads and joysticks on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux. zlib.

cl-mpg123

and cl-out123, bindings libraries for libmpg123 and libout123 respectively, giving you fast and easy to use mp3 decoding and cross-platform audio output. zlib.

Queen.lisp

Chess Utilities For Common Lisp. MIT.; board generation (0x88 method), move generation, FEN/SAN/PGN parser and generator, basic evaluation engine.

Graphics

Sketch

A CL framework for the creation of electronic art, graphics, and lots more. MIT.

Vecto

Simple vector drawing library. FreeBSD.

cl-svg

A basic library for producing SVG files. Expat.

trivial-svg

render SVG images to PNG using Vecto and zpb-ttf. 0BSD.

dufy

exact color manipulation and conversion in various color models. MIT.

opticl

a library for representing and processing images. BSD_2Clause.

Varjo

Lisp to GLSL translator. BSD_2Clause.

zpng

A library for creating PNG files. FreeBSD.

pngload-fast

A PNG (Portable Network Graphics) image format decoder in portable Common Lisp with an emphasis on speed. MIT.

imago

image manipulation library for Common Lisp.; supports images in png, pcx, portable bitmap (.pnm), Truevision TGA (.tga) and jpeg formats; allows for: resizing, rotation, emboss effect, inverting colors, adjusting contrast, manipulating color elements, composing pictures, drawing simple…

glfw

An up-to-date Common Lisp bindings library to the most recent GLFW OpenGL context management library.

cl-cairo2

Cairo bindings. Boost 1.0

cl-gd

A library providing an interface to the GD graphics library. FreeBSD.

cl-horde3d

FFI bindings to the Horde3D graphics library. Not available on Quicklisp. EPL 1.0

cl-jpeg

Baseline JPEG encoder and decoder library. 3-clause BSD.

cl-liballegro

Interface and bindings to the Allegro 5 game programming library. zlib.

cl-opengl

CFFI bindings to OpenGL, GLU and GLUT APIs. 3-clause BSD.

cl-sdl2

Bindings for SDL2 using C2FFI. Expat.

CLinch

Common Lisp 2D/3D graphics engine for OpenGL. FreeBSD.

donuts

Graphviz interface for Common Lisp. Expat.

lispbuilder-sdl

A set of bindings for SDL. Expat.

lisp-magick-wand

ImageMagick bindings. BSD. Not in Quicklisp.

okra

CFFI bindings to Ogre. Not available on Quicklisp. 3-clause BSD.

cl-cuda

A library to use NVIDIA CUDA in Common Lisp programs. LLGPL.

GUI

LispWork's CAPI

A portable GUI toolkit, with mobile runtime. Proprietary, but comes with a free version.

Allegro's Common Graphics

a library of functions for writing windowized GUIs for Windows, Mac and Linux. Proprietary with a free version.; since Allegro 10.1 (March, 2022), the IDE and the Common Graphics toolkit runs in the browser.

cl-gtk4

GTK4/Libadwaita/WebKit binding for Common Lisp. LGPL3.

cl-cffi-gtk

Binding for GTK+3. GNU LGPL2.1.; a tutorial: Learn Common Lisp by Example: GTK GUI with SBCL

Qtools

A Qt toolkit, based on CommonQt. zlib Also Qtools-ui (premade UI components), with videos.

CommonQt

A Common Lisp binding for Qt4 via QtSmoke. FreeBSD.

CommonQt5

bindings for Qt5.; warn: currently difficult to install. Used in production© by SISCOG.

ltk

A binding for the Tk toolkit. LLGPL or GNU LGPL2.1.

LTk Examples

Provides LTk examples for the tkdocs tutorial.

LTk Plotchart

A wrapper around the tklib/plotchart library to work with LTk. This includes over 20 different chart types (xy-plots, gantt charts, 3d-bar charts etc...).

nodgui

Bindings for the Tk toolkit, based on Ltk, with syntax sugar and additional widgets. LLGPL.; 🎨 supports tk custom themes, such as ttkthemes and Forest-ttk-theme.; supports an SDL frame as an alternative to the Tk canvas when fast rendering is needed. For 2D (pixel-based) and 3D rendering (using…

IUP

CFFI bindings to the IUP Portable User Interface library (pre-ALPHA).; IUP is cross-platform (Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, with new Android, iOs, Cocoa and Web Assembly drivers), has many widgets, has a small api and is actively developed.; has a web view.

Barium

an X widget toolkit, directly accessing the X client library and other platform libraries (OpenGL, Cairo). MIT.; with menus, panes, tabs, dialogs, a file chooser, a flexible event loop…; not a wrapper of another toolkit. Allows incremental GUI development.

CocoaInterface

Cocoa interface for Clozure Common Lisp. Build Cocoa user interface windows dynamically using Lisp code and bypass the typical Xcode processes. It has good documentation and a tutorial.

McCLIM

An implementation of the Common Lisp Interface Manager, version II. GNU LGPL2.1.; example project: a Lem editor CLIM interface: discussion, screenshot.

Anathema

, a theme library for McCLIM applications. Unlicense.; At time of reading (2026-05-18), it provides fonts and color changes. Doesn't change the rendering of widgets. Provides a Doom theme.

clim-modern

A theming library for McCLIM that replaces stock '90s Motif-style widgets with flat, modern-looking equivalents. Fully customizable via themes and per-widget style overrides. MIT. Built with LLMs.

cl-webkit

A binding to WebKitGTK+. Also adds web browsing capabilities to an application, leveraging the full power of the WebKit browsing engine. MIT.

ftw

A Win32 GUI library. MIT.

eql, eql5, eql5-android

Embedded Qt4 and Qt5 Lisp, embedded in ECL, embeddable in Qt. Port of EQL5 to the Android platform. MIT.

EQL5 on the Android store

bodge-nuklear

Wrapper over the Nuklear immediate mode GUI library. MIT.

vk

Common Lisp/CFFI bindings for the Vulkan API. MIT.; see also cl-vulkan - supports Vulkan 1.0 and 1.2, including compute pipelines. Vulkan 1.1 and 1.3 are coming soon©. MIT.; cl-vulkan currently supports SBCL and Clozure Common Lisp on Microsoft Windows, Linux and MacOS.

file-select

A library to invoke the native system file dialog to select or create files. Zlib.

Web views

Electron-lisp-boilerplate

a rudimentary boilerplate for building Electron apps that start a Lisp process.

ceramic

a wrapper around simpler tools to create and build an Electron app for Common Lisp. It is currently broken and unmaintained, but some tools are workth having a look at.

cl-webui

bindings for webui, that allows to use any web browser or WebView as GUI.

clogframe

an executable wrapper for webview.h, allowing to display any web application served by a Common Lisp server.; clogframe does not induce the use of the whole CLOG framework.

Mobile

LispWork's mobile runtime

Android and iOs. Proprietary.

LQML

a lightweight ECL binding to QML (both Qt5 and Qt6) derived from EQL5. LGPL and public domain.

sbcl-termux-build

Prebuilt SBCL binary for Android (Termux).

hello-alien

, SBCL built for an Android application.

Implementations

SBCL

Steel Bank Common Lisp. A fork of CMUCL; compiles to efficient machine code. Standard compliance. Public domain, with some parts under Expat and 3-clause BSD.; see also: sbcl-librarian - Dynamic library delivery tools for SBCL. Create shared libraries that can be called from C or Python. MIT. Blog…

In 2 lists

SBCL-GOODIES

Distributing binaries with Common Lisp and foreign libraries: libssl, libcrypto and libfixposix are statically baked in. MIT.

Nightly Windows builds of SBCL

Nightly builds of SBCL using MSYS2 UCRT64. See also Roswell's SBCL MSI builds.

SBCL on Chocolatey for Windows

(unofficial)

SBCL Windows builds supporting Windows 7+

, packaged into NSIS installer and updated monthly (unofficial)

CCL

Clozure Common Lisp; compiler-only implementation, generates native code. LLGPL.

In 2 lists

ECL

Embeddable Common Lisp; compiles to C. GNU LGPL2.1.; WASM support in development (NLNET grant in 2025)

In 2 lists

cross compilation

blog report: porting Maxima to iOS

.

eclweb

is a proof-of-concept REPL inside a browser using Web Assembly (WASM).

ABCL

Armed Bear Common Lisp; targets the JVM, compiles to bytecode. Standard conformance. GNU GPL3 with Classpath exception.

abcl-memory-compiler

a way to compile Java source code to create Java classes at runtime with ABCL. Apache2.

py4abcl

communicate with Python in ABCL.

CLASP

a new Common Lisp implementation that seamlessly interoperates with C++ libraries and programs using LLVM for compilation to native code. This allows Clasp to take advantage of a vast array of preexisting libraries and programs, such as out of the scientific computing ecosystem. LGPL2.1 (and…

LispWorks

an integrated cross-platform development tool for Common Lisp.; reputed features include: the CAPI cross-platform and native GUI toolkit, the LispWorks IDE, the mobile platforme runtime (iOs, Android), its Java interface, the tree shaker to build lighter binaries, its KnowledgeWorks system for…

Allegro CL

provides the full ANSI Common Lisp standard with many extensions.; reputed features include: the AllegroCache object persistence database system, the KnowledgeGraph system, its concurrent garbage collector, its web-based IDE, and more.; has a free edition. It includes AllegroCache, with a size…

CMUCL

An implementation from Carnegie Mellon University. Public domain. SBCL is a fork of CMUCL.

GNU CLISP

A GNU implementation; contains a compiler and an interpreter. Standard conformance. GNU GPL3. They develop on Gitlab.; compiles to bytecode, its default REPL is more user friendly than SBCL's (with symbol completion and readline integration).; however, it is not actively developed, it doesn't…

Corman Lisp

a Common Lisp development environment for Microsoft Windows running on Intel platforms. MIT.

cl-all

A script to run Lisp snippets in multiple implementations. This allows you to quickly compare implementation behaviour and differences. zlib.

Lisp parsers

Eclector

A portable Common Lisp reader that is highly customizable, can recover from errors and can return concrete syntax trees.; used in tools and libraries but still under active development

rewrite-cl

Read, modify, and write Common Lisp source code while preserving whitespace and comments. MIT. Built with LLMs.

cl-sourcery

Intercepts all standard CL definition forms (defun, defmacro, defclass, defstruct, etc.) to capture and store the exact source as written — including whitespace, comments, and formatting. MIT. Built with LLMs.

breeze

experiments on workflows for Common Lisp. WIP.

Tree-sitter grammars

tree-sitter-commonlisp

Common Lisp grammar for tree-sitter. MIT.; still Work In Progress.

tree-sitter-cl-syntax

another WIP grammar, ocused specifically on the syntax of the language.; with a grammar for format directives.

Language extensions

alexandria

A general-purpose utility library. Public domain.

serapeum

Another general-purpose utility library. Expat.

rutils

radical yet reasonable syntactic utilities for Common Lisp. MIT.

generic-cl

Generic function interface to standard Common Lisp functions (equality, comparison, arithmetic, objects, iterator, sequences,…). MIT.; see also the more lightweight equals MIT.

anaphora

A collection of anaphoric macros. Public domain.

arrow-macros

Clojure-like threading macros. MIT.

hu.dwim.walker

a code walker and unwalker (aka AST parser and unparser). BSD. See also this blog post.

Pattern matching

trivia

Optimized pattern-matching library. LLGPL.

Portability layers

trivial-arguments

A portable library to retrieve the arguments list and argument types of a function. zlib.

definitions

a general definitions introspection library. It gives you the ability to retrieve definitions or bindings associated with designators such as symbols, packages, and names in general. zlib.

DRef

Another definition introspection library with extensive documentation, tests and an emphasis on extensibility. MIT.

dissect

when a lot of projects use the “trivial-backtrace” system that just gives them a string with a backtrace, Dissect allows you to capture, step, and completely inspect the stack trace on a variety of Lisp implementations. Also very useful for logging and other situations where execution is…

Changing the syntax

cl-annot

Python-like annotations for Common Lisp. LLGPL.

cl-annot-revisit

re-implementation of cl-annot. WTFPL.

cl-reader

A utility library intended at providing reader macros for lambdas, mapping, accessors, hash-tables and hash-sets. MIT.

clamp

Arc language's brevity and conciseness to Common Lisp. Artistic License 2.0.; also arc-compat - Arc compatible package. Perl Foundation's Artistic Licence 2.0.

cl-interpol

A set of reader modifications to allow string interpolation. BSD.; see also: f-string for only string interpolation, with no dependencies. MIT.

mstrings

a reader macro to provide visually appealing multiline blocks. An M-string trims leading whitespace, concatenates lines together, etc. BSD_3Clause.

pythonic-string-reader

A simple and unobtrusive read table modification inspired by Python's three quote strings. BSD_3Clause.

cl-heredoc

a "heredocs" dispatcher. GPL3. Allows to write: #>eof>Write whatever (you) "want", no matter what characters, until the magic end sequence has been reached.eof

Moonli

a Julia/Python-ish syntax layer that transpiles to Common Lisp.; experimental.

CLOS extensions

closer-mop

A compatibility layer that rectifies many absent or incorrect MOP features. Expat.

specialization-store

generic functions based on types. Simplified BSD License variant.

filtered-functions

enable the use of arbitrary predicates for selecting and applying methods. MIT.

inlined-generic-function

Bringing the speed of Static Dispatch to CLOS. LLGPL.

static-dispatch

allows standard generic function dispatch to be performed statically (at compile time) rather than dynamically (runtime). This is similar to what is known as "overloading" in languages such as C++ and Java. MIT.

dynamic-mixins

simple, dynamic class combination. BSD_2Clause.

fast-generic-functions

Seal your generic functions for an extra boost in performance. MIT.

polymorphic functions

A function type to dispatch on types instead of classes with partial support for dispatching on optional and keyword argument types. Still experimental (May, 2021). MIT.; polymorphic-functions dispatch on the types of the arguments supplied to it. This helps dispatching on specialized arrays as…

defclass-std

a shortcut macro to write DEFCLASS and PRINT-OBJECT forms quickly. LLGPL.

nclasses

Syntactic sugar for class and generic function declarations. Features type inference, automatic accessors, inline initform syntax, automatic exports, and other conveniences. BSD.

slot-extra-options

lets you build a metaclass which in turn lets you specify extra slot options in its classes. LGPL3.

Function extensions

cl-hooks

Hooks extension point mechanism (as known, e.g., from GNU Emacs). LGPL.

method-hooks

When CLOS method combination allow only one hook per method, this library allows an arbitrary number of them. Mozilla Public Licence.

cl-advice

an attempt of portable layer advice library for SBCL, CCL, LispWorks and Allegro. Not in Quicklisp.

nhooks

an enhanced implementation of hooks (extension points) with crucial improvements.

Iteration

iterate

An iteration construct for Common Lisp which is extensible and Lispier. MIT.

Khazern

An implementation of CL:LOOP that can be used in any CL implementation without replacing the core CL:LOOP, is extensible and has a "batteries included" extension system with many useful iteration constructs.

for

A concise, lispy and extensible iteration macro. It is extensible and sensible, and unlike iterate it does not require code-walking and is easier to extend. zlib.

series

Functional style without any runtime penalty at all. MIT.

trivial-do

Additional dolist style macros for Common Lisp. MIT.

doplus

another extensible iteration library, similar to :for.

transducers

Ergonomic, efficient data processing. MPL-2.0.; "Transducers are an ergonomic and extremely memory-efficient way to process a data source. Here “data source” means simple collections like Lists or Vectors, but also potentially large files or generators of infinite data."; "It is, in general, the…

snakes

Python style generators for Common Lisp. Includes a port of itertools. Apache2.

picl

An (almost) complete port of Python's itertools package, complete with laziness where applicable, and not relying on cl-cont. MIT.

gtwiwtg

A lazy sequences library. Similar to 'series' but not as complete. However it has a 'modern' API with stuff like take, filter, for, fold, etc. that is easy to use.

gmap

A concise and extensible iteration facility that has the advantage of integrating well with FSet (see the Data Structures section), as it was written by the same author. In Quicklisp as part of misc-extensions. Public domain.

Lambda shorthands

fn

a couple of lambda shorthand macros. (fn* (+ _ _)) --> (lambda (_) (+ _ _)). Public domain.

f-underscore

a tiny library of functional programming utils. (f_ (+ _ _)) -> (lambda (_) (+ _ _)). Public domain.

cl-punch

Scala-like anonymous lambda literals. (mapcar ^(* 2 _) '(1 2 3 4 5)). MIT.

Non-deterministic, logic programming

cl-prolog2

Common Interface to ISO Prolog implementations from Common Lisp. MIT.

Screamer

augment Common Lisp with practically all of the functionality of both Prolog and constraint logic programming languages. Blog post solving Project Euler puzzles. MIT.

Screamer+

increasing the expressiveness of SCREAMER. MIT.

AP5

allows users to program in a model of first order logic or a relational database. 1989, updated 2024. Public domain.

Temperance

logic programming. MIT. A focus on performance, with General Game Playing in mind.

Reactive programming

Cells

an implementation of the dataflow programming paradigm, reactive spreadsheet-like expressiveness for CLOS. Used to build an algebra learning system. With documentation. Lisp LGPL.

lwcells

Light Weight Cells.; LWCELLS is a dataflow extension to Common Lisp. It maintains a consistent state of cells according to functions specifying their relation. LWCELLS is designed to be simple, clean, compositional and flexible.

Contract programming

quid-pro-quo

a contract programming library in the style of Eiffel’s Design by Contract ™. Public domain.

Typing

Coalton

an efficient, statically typed functional programming language that supercharges Common Lisp. MIT.; focuses on high-performance, built-in advanced mathematics, a numerical tower more powerful and extensible than Lisp's:; arbitrary precision floats, exact computable real arithmetic, transfinite…

flime

Real-time, project-wide Coalton compilation with isolated processes for LSP integration. MIT.

tokyo-tojo-json

a JSON parser implemented in Coalton.

coalton-threads

primitive thread and concurrency operations for Coalton.

coalton-io

Functional IO interfaces. Includes terminal IO, file system IO, random variables, mutable variables, multithreading, and safely sharing state between threads.

mine editor

an integrated development environment for Coalton and Common Lisp for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Lem editor mode for Coalton

syntax highlighting, code completion, autodoc, interactive compilation commands (coalton-compile-defun, C-c C-c).

Slime contrib for Coalton

shows type signatures. With a short demo video.

Coalton.app playground

a web-based REPL for Coalton. blog post announce.

smelter

a zero setup Coalton (and CL) scripts runner, with some batteries (JSON, HTTP, filesystem, process utilities).

trivial-types

provides missing but important type definitions such as proper-list, association-list, property-list and tuple. LLGPL.

defstar

a collection of macros for easy inclusion of type declarations for arguments in lambda lists. GNU GPL3

algebraic-data-types

defining algebraic data types in a similar spirit to Haskell or Standard ML, as well as for operating on them. BSD_3Clause.

typo

A portable type inference library for Common Lisp. MIT.

Theorem provers

ACL2

a logic and programming language in which you can model computer systems, together with a tool to help you prove properties of those models.; used in the industry since the 1990s.; it supports a subset of the ANSI standard Common Lisp programming language.; "Companies that have used ACL2 regularly…

Proofpad

, an online IDE for ACL2.

ACL2-kernel

, a Jupyter Kernel for ACL2.

Proceedings of the 19th International Workshop on the ACL2 theorem prover and its applications, 2025 (PDF)

Beginner

Learn X in Y minutes - Where X = Common Lisp

Small Common Lisp tutorial covering the essentials.

Lisp Koans

The project guides the learner progressively through many Common Lisp language features.

In 2 lists

Practical Common Lisp

A good introductory text to Common Lisp, with practical examples.; better read with a Firefox add-on: Practical-cl beautified.; translated in Chinese simplified

In 3 lists

Common LISP: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation

A nice introduction into the language.

Successful Lisp

A good book for beginners with some programming background.

Lisp Quickstart

A good tutorial to get up and code Common Lisp quickly.

Casting SPELs in LISP

A fun way to learn LISP while reading a comic book.

Common Lisp Programming: from novice to effective developer

A learning video series on the Udemy platform (full content under paid access). By an active lisper and community contributor (@vindarel). Github home.

Intermediate

The Common Lisp Cookbook

In 2 lists

Lisp Tips

A blog with useful tips and tricks.

Lisp project of the day

A blog showcasing many Lisp libraries.

Static type checking in the programmable programming language

Loving Common Lisp, or the Savvy Programmer's Secret Weapon

Quick introduction to Common Lisp with many examples. A particular focus is on how to use Large Language Models (LLMs).

Advanced

Let Over Lambda

A book on advanced macro techniques. The first six chapters are available online.

On Lisp

Paul Graham's amazing book on Lisp macros (and other interesting things).

In 2 lists

Programming Algorithms in Lisp

Updated version of "Programming Algorithms"; A comprehensive guide to writing efficient programs with data structures and algorithms in Lisp.

SBCL internals

sbcl-wiki

an open wiki to document SBCL's internals.

Coding platforms

Codewars

a code training platform, with Common Lisp support (SBCL).

Web Development

Section on Web Development in The Common Lisp Cookbook

An introductory tutorial covering web server setup, routing, weblocks, templating, error handling, packaging, hot reloading, database connection, and deployment, amongst other topics in the current lisp web development ecosystem.

Reference

Common Lisp Quick Reference

A distilled, pocket-size version of the ANSI CL spec. Available for download as a PDF.

CLHS

The Common Lisp HyperSpec; the ANSI CL standard, in hypertext form.

CLOS MOP specification

A modern public domain online version of chapters 5 and 6 of The Art of the Metaobject Protocol

Common Lisp Standard Draft (pdf)

The standard draft of the Common Lisp specifications, in a well formatted PDF with a sidebar.; also dpans2texi - the standard draft converted to Texinfo and published as a well formatted PDF.

which can be read online:

Common Lisp the Language

The original standard for Common Lisp before the ANSI spec.

CLtL2, in PDF format

Minispec

A friendlier, but less-complete, version of CLHS. Also contains documentation for some commonly-used CL libraries (such as Alexandria).

Simplified Common Lisp reference

The simplified version of CLHS.

CDR

Common Lisp Document Repository. a repository of documents that are of interest to the Common Lisp community. The most important property of a CDR document is that it will never change: if you refer to it, you can be sure that your reference will always refer to exactly the same document.; the…

In 2 lists

Beginner

Land of Lisp

A fun, game-oriented introduction to Common Lisp.

In 2 lists

Practical Common Lisp

A good introductory text to Common Lisp, with practical examples.; better read with a Firefox add-on: Practical-cl beautified.; translated in Chinese simplified

In 3 lists

Intermediate

ANSI Common Lisp

A thorough, practical covering of the entire language, with exercises. Not recommended as a starter text, due to some caveats.

In 2 lists

Common Lisp Recipes

Common Lisp Recipes is a collection of solutions to problems and answers to questions you are likely to encounter when writing real-world applications in Common Lisp. Published in 2015.

In 2 lists

Advanced

Let Over Lambda

A book on advanced macro techniques. The first six chapters are available online.

Object-Oriented Programming in Common Lisp: A Programmer's Guide to CLOS

An old, but very thorough book on CLOS.

Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp

A book on programming AI that covers some advanced Lisp.

In 2 lists

with a web version:

by Peter Norvig

In 2 lists

PAIP-lisp

Lisp code for the textbook "Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming".

In 2 lists

Norvig's Lisp style

and lisp-lang.org's style guide

Other books

Building Problem Solvers

(PDF) by Ken Forbus and Johan de Kleer, made available for free by MIT Press - a unique book among standard artificial intelligence texts in combining science and engineering, theory and craft to describe the construction of AI reasoning systems, and including code illustrating the ideas.

Community

/r/Common_Lisp

subreddit about Common Lisp

In 2 lists

/r/learnlisp

a subreddit to ask questions and get help about Lisp

common-lisp.net

Lisp Discord Server

#commonlisp

on Libera Chat - main Common Lisp IRC channel.

#lisp

on Libera Chat - IRC channel for all Lisp dialects.

Planet Lisp

A meta blog that collects the contents of various Lisp-related blogs.

Lisp Jabber/XMPP channel

Matrix-for-lispers

a space for chatting about different lisp topics with support for persistency, markdown, screenshots.; NEW as of May, 2026.; the registration token is lisp-spelt-without-caps. Click on "explore" to see all the available rooms.

Showcase

lisp-lang.org

lisp-screenshots.org

awesome-lisp-companies

cl-software

Applications built with Common Lisp

In 3 lists

Library Manager

Quicklisp

A library manager containing many libraries, with easy depencency management. Expat.

In 2 lists

ql-https

shell out to cURL and use HTTPS by default.

Quicklisp bundles

self-contained sets of systems that are exported from Quicklisp and loadable without involving Quicklisp.

ocicl

A modern dependency management tool with novel features. MIT.; project-local dependencies, code linting, project scaffolding, LLM-generated summaries of changes between package versions; securely distributed packages over TLS, all software packaged as OCI-compliant artifacts, and more.

Ultralisp

A Quicklisp distribution which updates every 5 minutes and to which one can add his project in one click. BSD.

Roswell

a Lisp implementation installer, script launcher and more. MIT.

Qlot

A project-local library installer, similar to Bundler or Virtualenv. Expat.; how to use it from the Lisp REPL without Roswell.

vend

Just vendor your dependencies! MPL-2.0.

CLPM

A package manager for Common Lisp that strives to cleanly separate the package manager process itself from the client image that uses it. BSD_2Clause.; CLPM comes as a pre-built binary, supports HTTPS by default, supports installing multiple package versions, supports versioned systems, and more.

trivial-system-loader

A system installation/loading abstraction for Common Lisp.; play nice with people using another library manager than Quicklisp: instead of hard-coding (ql:quickload :mysystem), use (tsl:load-system :mysystem). tsl:load-system will first try to use ocicl if available, then quicklisp, then plain…

Quicksys

install systems from multiple Quicklisp distributions. MIT.

Quickutil

A utility manager, similar to Quicklisp, but for small utilities rather than whole libraries. 3-clause BSD.

redist

facilities to produce Quicklisp distributions.

quick-patch

easily override quicklisp projects without using git submodules. MPL-2.0.

print-licenses

print licenses used by a project and its dependencies. MIT.

asdf-dependency-graph

A minimal wrapper around dot to generate an image of the dependencies graph.

Interfaces to other package managers

linux-packaging

build .deb, .rpm or .pkg packages for your application with a single ASDF declaration. Uses fpm under the hood. MIT.

qldeb

Quicklisp systems to debian packages, along with deb-packager (simply create a debian package by defining an s-expression). Both MIT.

ql-to-deb

Update cl-* debian packages from Quicklisp releases. WTFPL.

dh-quicklisp-buildapp

debhelper utility to let you compile your quicklisp-based Common Lisp code into a buildapp binary in a .deb with almost no effort. MIT.

cl-brewer

Homebrew formula builder for (command line) common lisp applications. Public domain.

flatpack-common-lisp

A BuildStream project for building Flatpak based runtime environments for Common Lisp applications.

alien-works-delivery

WIP system for delivering Common Lisp applications as executable bundles. For now it only supports AppImage format for Linux and MSIX for Windows, but .APK for Android and later MacOSX and iOS bundle formats are planned too.

cl-nix-lite

Common Lisp module for Nix, without Quicklisp. AGPL-3.0

asdf-sbcl

, a plugin for the universal package manager.

this Youtube video

(by 40ants, 2023) on how to use alien-works-delivery and linux-packaging.

HTTP clients

Dexador

An HTTP client, that aims at replacing Drakma. MIT.

Carrier

A lightweight, async HTTP client built on top of cl-async and fast-http. MIT.

fast-http

A fast HTTP request/response parser for Common Lisp. MIT.

http2

HTTP/2 implementation in Common Lisp. MIT.

HTTP Servers

Hunchentoot

A web server. 2-clause BSD

Clack

A web application environment inspired by Rack and WSGI. LLGPL. Provides a unified interface to a webserver of choice (default is Hunchentoot). With more getting started guide.

wookie

Asynchronous HTTP server. Expat.

woo

A fast non-blocking HTTP server on top of libev. MIT.

portableaserve

an attempt to provide the functionality of Franz.com's AllegroServe web server (open-source but tied to AllegroCL) to other lisp implementations.; the system named aserve on Quicklisp.; AllegroServe is open-source: LGPL2.1.; it provides:; HTTP/1.1 compliant web server capable of serving static and…

zaserve

a portable fork of AllegroServe LLGPL.

cl-http2-protocol

(archived) - a pure Common Lisp transport agnostic implementation of the HTTP/2 protocol at draft-14. MIT.

HTTP Servers >Hunchentoot plugins

easy-routes

a routes handling system on top of Hunchentoot. It supports dispatch based on HTTP method, arguments extraction from the url path, decorators, url generation from route name, etc. MIT.

hunchentoot-cgi

a library for executing CGI scripts from the hunchentoot webserver. BSD.

hunchentoot-multi-acceptor

Route multiple domains (virtual hosts) on a single hunchentoot acceptor using a single port. Apache2.0.

hunchentoot-errors

Augments Hunchentoot error pages and logs with request and session information. MIT.

hunchentoot-stuck-connection-monitor

Monitors hunchentoot connections and logs the connections stuck in the same state for a long time.; offers an option to shutdown the stuck connections sockets manually or automatically, thus unblocking the connection threads and preventing thread and socket leakage. BSD_2Clause.

cl-tbnl-gserver-tmgr

Hunchentoot Gserver-based taskmanager. cl-gserver is an actor-like message-passing library (see below in "Actors pattern"). Experimental.

hunchentoot-recycling-taskmaster

a taskmaster implementation for Hunchentoot, aiming to improve connection establishment efficiency through thread-pooling and flexible thread count adjustment. BSD_2Clause.

HTTP Servers >Clack plugins

tiny-routes

A tiny routing library for Common Lisp targeting Clack. BSD_3Clause.

clack-errors

Error page middleware for Clack. Unmaintained. LLGPL.

clath

a single sign-on middleware for Clack. It allows basic login with OAuth1.0a, OAuth2 and OpenID. At the time of writing, it supports authentication from Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, StackExchange, Reddit and Github. Apache2.0.

clack-pretend

a testing and debugging tool for clack. Apache2.0.

hismetic

Security for Clack-based web applications. Expat.

live-reload

Live reload prototype for clack. LLGPL.

clack-static-asset-middleware

a cache-busting static asset middleware for the clack. MIT.

lack-expression-cache

lack middleware for compressing and caching static resources. MIT.

lack-rerouter

lack middleware to reroute URIs of requests. MIT.

clack-cors

A Clack middleware to set CORS related HTTP headers. — Unlicense.

clack-promotheus

Clack middleware to serve stats in Prometheus format. Unlicense.

Web frameworks

Caveman

A powerful web framework. LLGPL. Example projects: Quickdocs

ningle

A super-micro web framework. LLGPL.

jingle

based on ningle, adds bells and whistles, such as middlewares.; includes an OpenAPI and Swagger UI demo.

radiance

A web application environment and framework . zlib.

Snooze

A RESTful web framework. Web server agnostic. Currently has support for Hunchentoot and Clack. Routes are just functions and HTTP conditions are just Lisp conditions. LLGPL.

cl-rest-server

a library for writing REST web APIs. Features validation with schemas, annotations for logging, caching, permissions or authentication, documentation via Swagger, etc. MIT.

Web frameworks >Isomorphic web frameworks

clogframe

an executable wrapper for webview.h, allowing to display any web application served by a Common Lisp server.; clogframe does not induce the use of the whole CLOG framework.

Weblocks (Reblocks)

A widgets-based framework with a built-in ajax update mechanism that "solves the JavaScript problem". LLGPL.; example code bases: Ultralisp, krasnodar, a dashboard made for a hackaton (2024) (demo video).

Interactive SSR

ISSR allows you to make interactive web pages without writing client scripting. No knowledge about Javascript or DOM is necessary.; it is not unlike Phoenix LiveView or Hotwire.

Fluxion

Live, server-rendered reactive web UI framework. MIT.; NEW as of 2026; blog post: "Fluxion: Building a Propagator-Based Reactive Web UI Framework in Common Lisp"

mold-desktop

a programmable desktop.

Parsing html

Plump

A lenient XML parser. zlib.

cl-html5-parser

HTML5 parser for Common Lisp. GPL3.0.; a port of the Python library html5lib.; compared to Plump: Plump is a mix of an XML and an HTML parser and breaks on some HTML rules, while cl-html5-parser is a fully compliant HTML parser.

cl-sanitize-html

OWASP-style HTML sanitization library for Common Lisp, designed for safely rendering untrusted HTML content (like HTML emails or user-generated content). MIT.; partly LLM. reddit announce.; related: trivial-sanitize

Querying HTML/DOM, web scraping

lquery

A jQuery-like HTML/DOM manipulation library. zlib.

scrapycl

web scraping framework for writing crawlers in Common Lisp. Unlicense.; relying on lquery.

HTML generators and templates

spinneret

Common Lisp HTML5 generator. Expat.

cl-who

The venerable HTML generator. FreeBSD.

Djula

A port of Django's template engine to Common Lisp. Expat.

cl-djula-tailwind

use TailwindCSS classe in your Djula templates without any JavaScript or Node.js tooling.

djula-template-designer

a template designer tool.

TEN

the completness of Djula with the full usability of Common Lisp code in templates. MIT.

cl-closure-template

Implementation of Google's Closure templates, where compiling a template creates a function that generates the result. LLGPL.

hsx

An easily composable HTML5 generation library with the most simplistic syntax. MIT.

clip

An HTML template processor where the templates are written in HTML. zlib.

lsx

and markup - Two JSX-like templating engines, where HTML tags are Common Lisp code. markup comes with an Emacs package.

html

Spinneret-style HTML generation but with no dependencies. Avoids advanced features for simplicity (Parenscript integration, pretty printing customization, etc.). MPL-2.0.

URI and IP handling

quri

Another URI library for Common Lisp. Supports userinfo, IPv6 hostname, encoding/decoding utilities,… BSD_3Clause.

cl-slug

a small library to make slugs, mainly for URIs, transform in CamelCase, remove accentuation and punctuation, for english and beyond. LLGPL.

netaddr

A network address manipulation library for Common Lisp. MIT.; for manipulating IP addresses, subnets, ranges, and sets. It is inspired by its namesake library in Python, netaddr.

Javascript

Parenscript

A translator from Common Lisp to Javascript. 3-clause BSD. See Trident-mode, an Emacs mode that provides live interaction with the browser.unlicence.; example: ParenScript + Mithril demo for Progressive Web Apps (PWA) [2025].; example: Building a Freecell game with ParenScript and Preact [2024].

paren6

a set of ES6 macros for Parenscript.

paren-async

async/await for Parenscript.

paren-jquery

Jquery-style macros for Parenscript. MIT.

JSCL

A CL-to-JS compiler designed to be self-hosting from day one. GPL3.0.; full support of format(pull request); supports loop(tests) and CLOS(tests)

live playground

live JupyterLite playground

(Wasm powered Jupyter running in the browser). Project source: jscl-kernel.

CL-JavaScript

A translator from Javascript to Common Lisp. Not available on Quicklisp. Expat.

parse-js

A package for parsing ECMAScript 3. zlib.

remote-js

send JavaScript from Common Lisp to a browser. MIT.

sigil

A Parenscript to Javascript command line compiler and REPL. MIT.

Valtan

Common Lisp to JavaScript compiler.

JACL

an experimental Lisp system for the Web browser platform to explore new techniques for developing large Single Page Applications with Lisp.

SLip

an aspiring Common Lisp environment in the browser.; Self-hosting compiler, TCO, CLOS, structures, conditions, loop and format, JavaScript "FFI", green threads…; in-browser development environment inspired by Emacs and Slime based on Ymacs.

Live demo

!

cl-react

Common Lisp (Parenscript) utilities for building web apps in ReactJs. MIT.

Panic

, a Parenscript library for React. Not in Quicklisp. MIT. Its TodoMVC example.

Parenscriptx

Parenscript Macros to aid generating react code. MIT.

jscl-react

A web framework for writing react components in common lisp using jscl. No license specified.

datastar-cl

Datastar Common Lisp SDK.; current dependency (not in Quicklisp, as of Sept. 2026): lc-sse

online demo:

trident-mode

, an Emacs minor mode for live Parenscript interaction.

Deployment

deploy

A toolkit for binary deployment of Lisp applications, with extra support for foreign shared libraries. zlib.

common-lisp-heroku-example

Example of Common Lisp server on Heroku using Docker.

cube

Kubernetes client library for Common LISP generated from the Swagger specification. MIT.

s2i-lisp

Source-to-Image builder image based on CentOS or alternatively RHEL7 for building Common LISP images for OpenShift (and also Docker). It features an up-to-date SBCL with Quicklisp installation, SLIME or SLY integration and allows customization via environment variables. Apache2

cl-aws-runtime-test

An example of using Common Lisp (SBCL) as a custom runtime on AWS lambda. WTFPL.

40ants/ci

Highly opionated Github Actions workflow builder for Common Lisp projects.; with: a linter, lisp critic, tests runner, test matrix, doc building, caching…

make-common-lisp-program

GitHub action to build an executable Common Lisp program on Ubuntu, MacOS and Windows. MIT.

Cloud Init file for SBCL

an init file for providers supporting the cloudinit format (DigitalOcean etc).

Deployment >Hosting platforms

Heliohost

for a free hosting solution.

Nearly Free Speech

25+ programming languages, pay for what you use.; SBCL and GNU CLISP

Monitoring

prometheus.cl

Prometheus.io client. Grafana dashboard for SBCL and Hunchentoot metrics (memory, threads, requests per second,…). MIT.

prometheus-g

Extension for prometheus.cl which collects metrics about garbage collector state.

lisp-sentry

A full-featured Common Lisp client library for Sentry application monitoring software. MIT.; light in dependencies, provides Sentry with source code in stack traces, supports file attachments, event breadcrumbs, automatically populated execution contexts, threads and user reports, GPU…

cl-sentry-client

a Sentry client for Common Lisp, the cloud-based error monitoring system. MIT.; based on dexador for HTTP communication and swank for stack traces. It also features an async HTTP client via the simple-tasks library.

rollbar.lisp

interface to Rollbar.com, an error tracking software.

Websockets

usocket

A portable TCP and UDP socket interface. Expat.

Portal

Portable websockets for Common Lisp, using usocket. LLGPL.

clws

websockets server in CL, built on IOlib and libfixposix. MIT.

Hunchensocket

RFC6455 compliant WebSockets for Common Lisp, as an extension to Hunchentoot. MIT.

websocket-driver

based on Clack.

iolib

I/O library. Expat.; "IOlib is to be a better and more modern I/O library than the standard Common Lisp library. It contains: a socket library, a DNS resolver, an I/O multiplexer, a pathname library and file-system utilities."

HTTPS

pure-tls

Pure Common Lisp TLS 1.3 implementation, HTTPS server with automatic Let's Encrypt certificate. MIT; warn: new code, partly done with LLMs.; read:

Building a TLS 1.3 implementation in Common Lisp

Automatic TLS Certificates for Common Lisp with pure-tls/acme

Web development utilities >Browser tests

cl-webdriver-client

a binding library to WebDriver (supports Selenium 4.0).

Web development utilities >Form handling

cl-forms

Web forms handling library for Common lisp. MIT.

Web development utilities >User login and password management

cl-authentic

Password management for Common Lisp (web) applications. LLGPL.; safe password storage: cleartext-free, using your choice of hash algorithm through ironclad, storage in an SQL database,; password reset mechanism with one-time tokens (suitable for mailing to users for confirmation),; user creation…

mito-email-auth

Helper to authenticate a website's users by sending them unique code by email.

cl-cas

A library to help CAS authenticaton to Common Lisp web applications. Not in Quicklisp.

cas-middleware

CAS authenticaton middleware for Caveman.

cas-demo

a demo project.

Web development utilities >Testing HTTP requests

the-great-rouclere

Programmable HTTP mocking library in Common Lisp. MIT.; "allows the programmer to set "if-then" expectations for incoming HTTP requests, letting the programmer specify responses in a declarative way".

Web development utilities >Web project skeletons and generators

cl-cookieweb

a Cookiecutter template to start a web project. BSD_3Clause. Not in Quicklisp.; Provides a working toy web app with the Hunchentoot web server, easy-routes, Djula templates, styled with Bulma, based on SQLite, with migrations, an example table definition and a test suite using FiveAM.

make-like

an application template builder for LIKE (Lisp In Kubernetes + Emacs) applications. Apache2.0.; Makefile, podman support, GitHub Actions, Prometheus metrics support, TOML-style config.ini, easy-route preconfigured with health-check and more.

cl-webapp-seed

a simple web application boilerplate. Uses Hunchentoot, cl-who, deploys easily to Heroku. MIT.

Others

LASS

Lisp Augmented Style Sheets. Largely inspired by SASS. Zlib.

css-lite

A CSS grammar. Expat.

find-port

Programmatically find open ports. MIT.

cl-wget

Makes retrieving large files or mirroring entire websites easy. AGPL-3.0.

trivial-download

Download files.; currently archived and unmaintained. MIT.

cl-cookie

HTTP Cookie (jar) manager: parse and write (set-)cookie headers, compare cookies, optional cookie attribute sanity check. MIT

dns-client

DNS record client. See documentation. zlib.

mobiledetect

System for detecting mobile devices (including tablets) in User-Agent strings. MIT.

random-ua

Random User-Agent generator for Common Lisp. BSD_2Clause.

cl-web-push

Web Push Notifications for Common Lisp applications.

Others >Email

trivial-imap

tries to make easy some common cases of working with IMAP servers, like reading emails from the server. A thin wrapper over post-office library (which is a fork of Franz's cl-imap). BSD.

cl-smtp

CL-SMTP is a simple lisp smtp client.

sendgrid

send emails with Sendgrid's API. MIT.

mailgun

A thin wrapper to post HTML emails through mailgun.com. unlicence.

parcom/json

An extension to parcom for simple, fast, no-dependency JSON parsing.

Others >OpenAPI, OData, OpenRPC

apispec

A Common Lisp library for handling Web API requests and responses. BSD_3Clause.; takes an OpenAPI3 yaml specification and allows to validate and parse HTTP request headers, parameters and bodies.

cl-odata-client

Common Lisp client library for accessing OData services. MIT.

OpenRPC

OpenRPC implementation for Common Lisp. BSD.; Automatic OpenRPC spec generation; Automatic JSON-RPC client building by OpenRPC spec. This includes creation of Common Lisp classes and methods for making RPC requests and returning native CL objects.; all JSON marshalling is done under the hood.

jsonrpc

JSON-RPC 2.0 server/client for Common Lisp. BSD.

Others >Static site generators

coleslaw

and its coleslaw-cli - Flexible Lisp Blogware similar to Frog, Jekyll, or Hakyll. BSD.

Others >Third-party APIs

pirá

Unofficial AWS SDK for Common Lisp.; "Pirá is a modern, unofficial AWS SDK for Common Lisp built on the Smithy protocol framework. It provides comprehensive coverage of AWS services through auto-generated client code from official AWS service models."; Supports 400+ AWS services; Multiple…

aws-sdk-lisp

Provides interfaces for each AWS services as individual systems. BSD_2Clause.; intended to be replaced by Pirá; incluse dozens of services: dsn, appstream, athena, cloudfront, codedeploy, cognito-*, directconnect, dynamodb, dms, elasticache, email, events, kinesis, machinelearning, monitoring, s3,…

Aws-sign4

Common Lisp library for Amazon Web Services signing version 4. GNU GPL3.

zs3

A library for working with Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) and CloudFront service. BSD.

north

The successor to the South (Simple OaUTH) library, implementing the full oAuth 1.0a protocol, both client and server sides. Using North you can easily become an oAuth provider or consumer. zlib.

Ciao

an easy-to-use Common Lisp OAuth 2.0 client library. It is a port of the Racket OAuth 2.0 Client to Common Lisp. LGPL3.

cl-oauth2

OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect client library for Common Lisp. Supports authorization code (with PKCE), client credentials, device authorization, token refresh, JWT verification (RS256/ES256/HS256), OIDC discovery, and token caching. MIT.; built with LLMs

tooter

a client library implementing the full v1 REST API protocol for Mastodon. zlib.

cl-irc

An IRC client library. Expat.

cl-mediawiki

a wrapper around the MediaWiki api. MIT.

cl-openid

An implementation of OpenID. LLGPL.

cl-pushover

Common Lisp bindings to Pushover. MIT.

humbler

A Tumblr API interface. zlib.

multiposter

post to multiple services simultaneously. zlib.

stripe

a client for the Stripe payment system. MIT.

lisp-pay

Wrappers around various payment processors: Paypal, Stripe, Coinpayments and BTCPayServer. MIT.

lunamech-matrix-api

A complete wrapper over the Client -> Server Matrix API. MIT.

cl-telegram-bot

Telegram bot API. MIT.; includes example bots such as a calculator, payment with invoices, an actor-based bot…; automatic API spec parser

cl-telegram-bot-auto-api

Alternative Telegram Bot API bindings, auto-generated from Telegram website. 3-clause BSD.

Numerical and Scientific

maxima

Computer Algebra System. GNU GPL3.; [new, POC] Maxima in the browser on WASM, sources; it can be used via SageMath and KDE Cantor.; it can be used within Emacs:

wxMaxima

a graphical frontend.

Maxima on Jupyter

maxima-mode

(screenshot)

maxima-interface

to ease the interface between Maxima and Common Lisp.

symbol-cruncher

Computer algebra system for computations in differential geometry. Built on top of maxima-interface.

numcl

Numpy clone in Common Lisp. LGPL3.

numericals

SIMD powered simple-math numerical operations on arrays for Common Lisp through CFFI [still experimental]. MIT.

documentation:

dense-arrays

Numpy like array object for common lisp. MIT.

GSLL

GNU Scientific Library for Lisp; allows the use of the GSL from Common Lisp. GNU LGPL2.1.

Xecto

A library for regular array parallelism. 3-clause BSD.

Petalisp

an attempt to generate high performance code for parallel computers by JIT-compiling array definitions. It works on a more fundamental level than NumPy, by providing even more powerful N-dimensional arrays, but just a few building blocks for working on them. AGPL-3.0.

cl-ana

Common Lisp data analysis library with emphasis on modularity and conceptual clarity. It aims to be a general purpose framework for analyzing small and large scale datasets, including binned data analysis and visualization. GNU GPL3.

avm

Efficient and expressive arrayed vector math library with multi-threading and CUDA support. MIT.

array-operations

a collection of functions and macros for manipulating Common Lisp arrays and performing numerical calculations with them. MIT.

cl-geometry

a system for two dimensional computational geometry for Common Lisp. MIT.

Vellum

Data Frames for Common Lisp. BSD_2Clause.

rtg-math

a selection of the math routines most commonly needed for making realtime graphics in lisp (2, 3 and 4 component vectors, 3x3 and 4x4 matrices, quaternions, spherical and polar coordinates). BSD_2Clause.

linear-programming

a library for solving linear programming problems. MIT.

shop3

a Hierarchical Task Network (HTN) AI planner. Mozilla Public License.

cl-torch

"Like PyTorch, CL-Torch is mostly an FFI wrapper around C++ LibTorch, which handles all the numerics." MIT.

introductory blog post

"It's nowhere near done" as of August, 2026.

Matrix libraries

LLA

Lisp Linear Algebra. MS-PL.; a high-level Common Lisp library built on on BLAS and LAPACK, but providing a more abstract interface with the purpose of freeing the user from low-level concerns and reducing the number of bugs in numerical code.

magicl

Matrix Algebra proGrams In Common Lisp based on BLAS/LAPACK and Expokit, by Rigetti Computing. BSD_3Clause.

lisp-matrix

A matrix package. FreeBSD.

3d-matrices

A library implementing common matrix calculations, with an emphasis on 2x2,3x3, and 4x4 matrices as commonly used in graphics. It provides some numerical functions as well, but those are not the focus. The library is heavily optimised, so it is not made of pretty code. zlib.

clem

a matrix library. BSD_2Clause.

Statistics

lisp-stat

an environment for statistical computing, conceptually similar to R, that is also suitable for front-line production deployments. "It grew out of a desire to have an environment for rapidly prototyping analytical and A.I. solutions, and move directly to production environments with minimal…;…

https://lisp-stat.dev/

Units

physical-quantities

a library that provides a numeric type with optional unit and/or uncertainty for computations with automatic error propagation. GPL2

Plotting

emacs-vega-view

an Emacs plugin that allows to display a Vega plot from a lisp-stat expression in a buffer.

vgplot

an interface to the gnuplot plotting utility with the intention to resemble some of the plot commands of octave or matlab. GPL3.

eazy-gnuplot

a lispy, structure-less Gnuplot library. With its cookbook. LLGPL

kai

A high-level plotter library for Common Lisp. A wrapper around the Plotly JS library. MIT.

ADW-Charting

A simple chart drawing library written completely in Common Lisp. Also includes a backend to Google's chart service. BSD-like.

plotly-user

Use plotly in your browser to explore data from a Common Lisp REPL. BSD_3Clause.

cl-text-plot

Plot with text in Common Lisp. No licence specified.

cl-spark

sparkline strings for the console: (spark '(1 1 2 3 5 8)) => "▁▁▂▃▅▇". MIT.

Utils

infix-math

An extensible infix syntax for math. MIT.; can also turn the REPL into a calculator.

cmu-infix

A library for writing infix mathematical notation in Common Lisp.; see also polisher.

Parallelism and Concurrency

BordeauxThreads

Portable, shared-state concurrency. Expat.

lparallel

A library for parallel programming. 3-clause BSD. Originally on lmj/lparallel.; with good documentation

lfarm

distributing work across machines (on top of lparallel and usocket). BSD_3Clause

calispel

CSP-like channels for common lisp. With blocking, optionally buffered channels and a "CSP select" statement. ISC-style.; "It is complete, flexible and easy to use. I would recommend Calispel over Lparallel and ChanL." @Ambrevar. discussion

chanl

Portable, channel-based concurrency. Expat, with parts under 3-clause BSD.

cl-async

A library for general-purpose, non-blocking programming. Expat.

Moira

Monitor and restart background threads. In-lisp process supervisor. MIT.

trivial-monitored-thread

a Common Lisp library offering a way of spawning threads and being informed when one any of them crash and die. MIT.

cl-gearman

a library for the Gearman distributed job system. LLGPL.

swank-crew

distributed computation framework implemented using Swank Client. BSD_3Clause.

cl-coroutine

a coroutine library. It uses the CL-CONT continuations library in its implementation. MIT.

STMX

High performance Transactional Memory for Common Lisp. LLGPL.

Blackbird

a Promise implementation for Common Lisp MIT.; see also promise - a basic promise datastructure, with timeouts. ZLIB.

cl-cancel

Cancellation propagation library for Common Lisp with deadlines and timeouts. MIT. With LLM.

cl-etcd

Run etcd as an asynchronous inferior process. etcd is a strongly consistent, distributed key-value store. AGPL-3.0.

Actors pattern

Sento

Sento is a 'message passing' library/framework with actors similar to Erlang or Akka. It supports creating systems that should work reactive, require parallel computing and event based message handling. Apache2.; has remoting support since 2026-03.

lisp-actors

, an "ongoing investigation into the use of the Actor model in Common Lisp, which has had the benefit of real-world application".; it was part of the Emotiq blockchain (a discontinued project); does remoting, includes a threading abstraction layer library similar to Bordeaux-Threads.; ! it lacks…

Actors

package for LispWorks (announce) MIT.

Event processing

simple-tasks

A very simple task scheduling framework. zlib.; saves the return values and the task environment in case of failure, so we can inspect it later.

deeds

Deeds is an Extensible Event Delivery System. It allows for efficient event delivery to multiple handlers with a complex event filtering system. zlib.

cl-flow

Data-flowish computation tree library for non-blocking concurrent Common Lisp. MIT.

event-glue

simple eventing abstraction. No dependencies. It can be used anywhere you need a generic event handling system. MIT.

cl-nats

A full-featured NATS messaging client for Common Lisp. MIT. With LLM.; Pub/Sub, request/reply, TLS 1.3, auto-reconnect, cluster discovery, Keep-Alive, cancellation.

Job processing

SBCL's timers

, system-wide event schedulers.

In 2 lists

psychiq

redis-based background job processing for Common Lisp applications. Inspired by Ruby's Sidekiq and compatible with its web UI. LLGPL.

cl-cron

A simple tool that provides cron like facilities. GPL3.

clerk

run regular or one-time jobs at given intervals. MIT.; maintained on lisp-maintainers/clerk

Regular expressions and string parsing

cl-ppcre

Portable, Perl-compatible regular expressions. FreeBSD.

one-more-re-nightmare

a fast-ish regular expression compiler in Common Lisp. BSD_2Clause.

rexxparse

A string parsing tool inspired by the REXX PARSE construct. MIT.

pregexp

Portable Regular Expressions for Scheme and Common Lisp.

Running scripts

ScriptL

Shell scripting made Lisp-like! Or, live-coding remote function calls for the shell. Write a command in the REPL, and run it instantly in the shell. LLGPL.; similar and maybe simpler: lserver

CIEL

CIEL Is an Extended Lisp is a collection of dozens of libraries useful for mundane tasks (HTTP, JSON, regexps…). [unclear licence]; It also comes as a binary that is able to run scripts from sources. Scripts that use the built-in libraries start fast without a compilation step.; in beta as of 2024

kiln

an infrastructure (managing a hidden multicall binary) to make Lisp scripting efficient and ergonomic. MIT.; Kiln makes it practical to write very small scripts. Kiln scripts are fast and cheap to the point where it makes sense to expose even small pieces of Lisp functionality to the shell.

Command-line options parsers

Clingon

a rich command-line options parser system.; it may have the richest feature set: subcommands, generation of bash completion, support for various kinds of options (integers, booleans, counter, enums…), extensible…

clingon-scripter

define flags as simple defvar declarations.

Adopt

A Damn OPTion parsing library. MIT.

Readline, ncurses and other graphical TUI helpers

cl-tuition

A Common Lisp library for building rich, responsive TUIs. MIT.; model-view-update Elm architecture, reusable widgets (text input, spinner, progress bar…), mouse support, layout helpers…

cl-readline

a set of functions to edit lines as they are typed in, to maintain a list of previously-entered command lines, to recall and reedit them and perform csh-like history expansion. Emacs and vi editing modes. GPL3.

cl-isocline

an alternative to libreadline, libedit and the likes.; in contrast to the contagious GPL-licensed libreadline, it is MIT licensed, pure C, portable across Unix, Windows, MacOS, supports multiline editing out of the box, and more.; contains isocline-repl, a feature-rich Common Lisp REPL with…

Linedit

Readline-style library that provides customizable line-editing features. MIT-style.

cl-charms

an interface to libcurses in Common Lisp. It provides both a raw, low-level interface to libcurses via CFFI, and a more higher-level lispier interface. MIT.

cl-termbox2

Termbox2 bindings.; "termbox2 is a terminal I/O library for creating TUIs. It is a slim alternative to the ubiquitous ncurses library. Unlike ncurses, it has a tighter API, and comes with built-in support for popular terminals if a terminfo db is not present on the system."

replic

helpers to turn existing code into a readline application, with a focus on defining the completion of the commands' arguments. Also comes as a ready to use executable, that transforms a user's lispy init file into readline commands. MIT.

cl-ansi-term

print colorized text, horizontal lines, progress bars, (un)ordered lists and tables on ANSI-compliant terminals. GPL3.

cl-progress-bar

progress bars, just like in Quicklisp ! MIT.; and progressons, a progress bar on one line, for real an dumb terminals. MIT.

text-draw

Toolkit to draw graphics using pure Unicode text only: boxes, backgrounds, checkboxes and radio buttons, lines, arrows, tables, trees… zlib.

old-norse

a low-latency, grid-based terminal graphics engine with an integrated event loop. MIT.; mouse support, 60fps rendering, deploy anywhere via SSH or TTYD.

uncursed

cross-platform library for writing terminal interfaces with minimal dependencies. BSD_3Clause.; a higher-level buffered drawing abstraction and low-level utilities are provided.

Shells, shells interfaces

shcl

a POSIX-like shell in Common Lisp. Apache2.0.

unix-in-lisp

Mount Unix system into Common Lisp image.; Unix concepts are directly/shallowly embedded into Lisp (Unix commands become Lisp macros, Unix file become Lisp variables, Unix streams become lazy Lisp sequences, etc).

cmd

utility for running external programs. Protects against shell interpolation, built with multi-threaded programs in mind, Windows support. MIT.; uiop:run-program (synchronous) and uiop:launch-program (async) are shipped with ASDF and available on all modern implementations. See the CL Cookbook:…

Clesh

extends Common Lisp to embed shell code in a manner similar to perl's backtick. FreeBSD.

Lish

lish may someday be a lisp shell. GPL3.; supports tab-completion of executables in the path and Lisp symbols, allows to write and to mix shell commands and Lisp code, has a tiny REPL and an interactive debugger, and more.; WARN: this is an old backup. The original repository is no more.

System administration

Consfigurator

Lisp declarative configuration management system. You can use it to configure hosts as root, deploy services as unprivileged users, build and deploy containers, produce disc images, operate on files and directories and more. GPL3.; apache, apt, cmd, container, cron, disk, file, firewalld, git,…

cl-unix-cybernetics

(previously Adams) - UNIX system administration in Common Lisp. ISC.; You describe your systems (hosts) using resources having properties. The properties are then probed and synchronized using only /bin/sh on the remote host, and /usr/bin/ssh on the control host.

cl-ssh

SSH v2 client implementation. MIT.; Core transport, authentication, and session execution work. Use at your own risk.; see also: trivial-ssh (bitrot as of 2026?)

Updating executables

cl-selfupdate

Self-update functionality for Common Lisp executables via GitHub/GitLab Releases. MIT.

Other scripting utilities

clawk

an AWK implementation embedded into Common Lisp, to search files for lines and perform specified actions on its fields. BSD-style.

lqn

query language and terminal utility for querying and transforming Lisp, JSON and other text files. written in Common Lisp. MIT.

WCL

[stalled] - allow hundreds of Lisp applications to be realistically available at once, while allowing several of them to run concurrently. WCL accomplishes this by providing Common Lisp as a Unix shared library that can be linked with Lisp and C code to produce efficient applications. For…

Text Editor Resources

Parinfer

Parinfer is a way to edit lisp code that helps to keep both the indentation and the parenthesis balanced. It is easy to start with and yet it offers advanced features à la Paredit. It is available on many editors (Emacs, Vim, Neovim, Atom, Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code, LightTable, CodeMirror,…).

Emacs

Slime contrib for Coalton

shows type signatures. With a short demo video.

Sly

SLY is a fork of SLIME and contains multiple changes and new features, such as Sly stickers.; no C-c C-y shortcut aka slime-call-defun equivalent!

lisp-ts-mode

Tree-sitter powered Common Lisp major-mode with FORMAT string syntax highlighting and indentation. Compatible with Sly and Slime.

gaudy-cl

Colorful semantic syntax highlighting, powered by lisp-ts-mode and Sly or Slime.

Emacs4CL

A tiny Emacs initialization file to quickly set up vanilla Emacs for Common Lisp programming. Comes with a line-by-line explanation of every line of code in the initialization file.

plain-common-lisp

A trivial way to get a native Common Lisp environment on Windows.; ships SBCL, Quicklisp, Emacs and Slime.; with example programs for a console program, accessing the Win32 API, displaying a GUI with IUP, running an OpenGL window.

cl-devel2

a Docker container for Common Lisp development environment. Ships SBCL, CCL, Roswell and Emacs 26 with Slime.

Portacle

A portable and multiplatform Common Lisp environment: SBCL, Quicklisp, Emacs, Slime, Git.; warm: Portacle is now un-maintained and ships an old Emacs.

In 2 lists

IDEmacs

is an attempt at making Emacs beginner friendly.; it ships Sly for Common Lisp. With Emacs v29 or higher, you can try IDEmacs temporarily without messing with your .emacs configuration, thanks to the new --init-directory option.

lisp-stat's Docker image

comes with a ready-to-use Emacs.

slime-star

a SLIME configuration with extensions pre-installed, with also some custom utilities and menus:; the Lisp system browser

SLIME doc contrib

enhance the default help buffer.

Quicklisp systems

Search, browse and load Quicklisp systems from Emacs.

Slime breakpoints

Slite

a test runner for FiveAM.

Quicklisp-apropos

Perform apropos queries across libraries in Quicklisp (full-text search on symbol names, classes, documentation…).

slime-critic

the lisp critic gently critiques your code for bad patterns.

sly-overlay

an extension for Sly that enables the overlay of Common Lisp evaluation results directly into the buffer in the spirit of CIDER (Clojure), Eros (Emacs Lisp) and the Lem editor.

sly-mrepl-db

from the debugger, evaluate expressions in a REPL with frame context (and not only in the minibuffer).

Quicksearch

search for projects on GitHub, Quicklisp, Cliki and Bitbucket. MIT.

Vim & Neovim

SLIMV

Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Vim; a full-blown environment for Common Lisp inside of Vim. No license specified.

Vlime

VLIME: Vim plus Lisp Is Mostly Evil. A Common Lisp dev environment for Vim (and Neovim). MIT.

quicklisp.nvim

A Quicklisp frontend for Neovim.

Slimv_box

slimv in a Docker container.

Eclipse

Dandelion

a Common Lisp plugin for the Eclipse IDE.

Lem

Lem

a general-purpose development environment extensible in Common Lisp.MIT.; ncurses and webview frontends.; built-in LSP client.; ready to use, Emacs-like, Slime-based editor tailored for Common Lisp out of the box.

website and documentation:

Rooms: Lem on the cloud

(video presentation); "Rooms is a product that runs Lem, a text editor created in Common Lisp, in the Cloud and can be used by multiple users."

LispWorks

lw-plugins

LispWorks Plugins by April & May. OBSD.; terminal integration, code folding, side tree, markdown highlighting, Nerd Fonts, fuzzy-matching, enhanced directory mode, expand region, pair editing, SVG rendering…

lw-rich-text

LispWorks panes with support for HTML-like markup.

Mine - single-download beginner friendly IDE for Common Lisp and Coalton

mine editor

an integrated development environment for Coalton and Common Lisp for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Atom, Pulsar

SLIMA

allows you to interactively develop Common Lisp code, turning Atom (or now Pulsar) into a pretty good, and actively developped, Lisp IDE. MIT.; notice: at the time of writing, SLIMA is a bit lagging behind Slime and Swank's latest changes. It works for us with Slime 2.27. Tested on SBCL 2.5.8 and…

Sublime Text

Sublime Text

(proprietary) has Common Lisp support with its SublimeREPL and Slyblime packages. Slyblime is an implementation of SLY and it uses the same backend (SLYNK). It ships advanced features including a debugger with stack frame inspection.

VSCode

announce and difference from Alive

alive

Common Lisp Extension for VSCode. Public domain.; not based on Slime/Swank.; see the Cookbook: using VSCode with Alive

commonlisp-vscode

an extension to support syntax highlight, auto completion, documentation on hover, go to definition, compile & load file, REPL. It is On GitHub.

strict-paredit-vscode

structural editing and navigation like Emacs.

JetBrains

SLT

an IDE Plugin for Intellij/Jetbrains IDE lineup implementing support for Common Lisp via SBCL and Slime/Swank.; released in Jan, 2023. Experimental.; see this fork that is updated to work on Intellij 2025.3.2.

Zed

zed-dl

Common Lisp language support for the Zed editor with integrated LSP server and Jupyter kernel support. Built with LLMs. NEW in 2026.

Geany (experimental)

Geany-lisp

is an experimental lisp mode for the Geany editor.

Notebooks

common-lisp-jupyter

A Common Lisp kernel for Jupyter along with a library for building Jupyter kernels, based on Maxima-Jupyter by Robert Dodier which was based on cl-jupyter by Frederic Peschanski. MIT.

Cytoscape widget

Cytoscape.js widget for common-lisp-jupyter.

Kekule widget

Kekule.js widget for common-lisp-jupyter.

ngl widget

A ngl widget (protein viewer) for common-lisp-jupyter.

sheet widget

Data grid widget for common-lisp-jupyter.

cl-jupyter

A Common Lisp kernel for Jupyter notebooks custom licence.

icl

the enhanced REPL (see below) includes a very capable notebook feature with advanced charting capabilities.

REPLs

icl

an enhanced REPL for the terminal. MIT.; based on Slynk: shares many features with Slime.; interactive inspector; experimental ,explain command that fires up Gemini or Claude CLI.

cl-repl

an ipython-like REPL. With completion, shell commands, magic commands, debugger, etc. GPL3.; binary releases: simply download a binary (Ubuntu, OSX, Windows) and run it.; compared to icl: has an interactive debugger, has a ! shell shortcut, has an %edit command, has classic readline-based…

colorthemes

.

cl-isocline

an alternative to libreadline, libedit and the likes.; in contrast to the contagious GPL-licensed libreadline, it is MIT licensed, pure C, portable across Unix, Windows, MacOS, supports multiline editing out of the box, and more.; contains isocline-repl, a feature-rich Common Lisp REPL with…

magic-ed

a tiny editing facility, where you can directly load, edit, manipulate and evaluate file or file content from the REPL, when going to a full IDE is too much. MIT.

Online editors

Judge0 IDE

is an online editor which supports Common Lisp (SBCL). MIT.

Riju

, a "fast online playground for every programming language", supports Common Lisp (SBCL).

Text and binary parsers

esrap

Parsing Grammar, Packrat parser, TDPL features and more. Expat.

parseq

a library for parsing sequences such as strings and lists using Parsing Expression Grammars (PEGs). Inspired by Esrap. GPL2.

uclp

An experimental implementation of parsing expression grammars (PEGs, a la Janet) in Common Lisp. MIT.

alexa

A Lexical Analyzer Generator. BSD_3Clause.; ALEXA is a tool similar to lex or flex for generating lexical analyzers. Unlike tools like lex, however, ALEXA defines a domain-specific language within your Lisp program, so you don't need to invoke a separate tool.

cl-yacc

a LALR(1) parser generator. MIT.

cl-shlex

simple lexical analyzer for shell-like syntaxes. MIT.

smug

parser combinators for Common Lisp. SMUG makes it simple to create quick extensible recursive descent parsers without funky syntax or impenetrable macrology. MIT.

MaxPC

a simple and pragmatic library for writing parsers and lexers based on combinatory parsing.; MaxPC is capable of parsing deterministic, context-free languages, provides powerful tools for parse tree transformation and error handling, and can operate on sequences and streams.; excellent…

parcom/json

An extension to parcom for simple, fast, no-dependency JSON parsing.

lisp-binary

A library to easily read and write complex binary formats. GPL3.

texp

A DSL to generate TeX. AGPL-3.0.

Text Processing

montezuma

Full-text indexing and search for Common Lisp. Expat.

mk-string-metrics

Calculate various string metrics efficiently in Common Lisp (Damerau-Levenshtein, Hamming, Jaro, Jaro-Winkler, Levenshtein, etc). MIT.

wiki-lang-detect

Text language identification using Wikipedia data. No license specified.

In 2 lists

cl-phonetic

Phonetic pattern matching library for Common Lisp (intended to replace the Sylvia library for Python). MIT.

cl-string-generator

Generate string from regular expression. MIT.

trivial-sanitize

clean html strings: "<a>foo</a>" → "foo". LLGPL.

Resolve

A software for AST-based diff calculation, display, and automated resolution. Written in C++ and CL, you'll find Lisp utilities.

Tools

quicksearch

Look up online libraries from the REPL. Expat.

lake

a GNU make like build utility. MIT.

Unit Testing

FiveAM

Simple regression testing framework. FreeBSD.

FiveAM documentation

fiveam-matchers

an extensible, composable matchers library for fiveam. Apache2.0.

Parachute

An extensible and cross-compatible testing framework. With test dependencies, conditions, fixtures and restarts. zlib.

CLUnit2

A unit testing library. MIT.

Mockingbird

A small stubbing and mocking library for Common Lisp. Can also check wether a stubbed function was called, how many times and with which arguments. MIT.

cl-mock

Another mocking library. It has more features than Mockingbird, like pattern matching on the mocked call, etc.

Check-it

A QuickCheck-style randomized property-based testing. LLGPL.

cl-coveralls

a helper library to post test coverage to Coveralls. See SBCL's code coverage tool. FreeBSD.

CheckL

Why write programs in Common Lisp but tests like Java? Meet CheckL!; a testing library that checks the current test value against the previous one and offers restarts.

Try

Try is an extensible test anti-framework with equal support for interactive and non-interactive workflows, as well as Emacs integration. MIT.

testiere

a testing utility where tests are included at the top of a defun/t form. They are run when you recompile your functions interactively. With mocking and stubbing support. GPL3.

testiere-mode

for Emacs, to hide and show the #+testiere section.

cl-hamcrest

a set of Hamcrest matchers that can be combined to create flexible expressions of intent. Helps make your unittests more readable by using assertions such as has-plist-entries, has-slots, has-length, contains, contains-in-any-order, has-all… BSD_3Clause.

Slite

a test runner for FiveAM.

CI-utils

(low activity) - a set of utilities and examples for working on continuous integration platforms, including a run script for the Fiveam test library.; helps run Fiveam tests with the right exit code.; integrated with Roswell.

Caching (serialization)

cl-store

a portable serialization package which gives you the ability to store all common-lisp data types into streams. MIT.; Call store object "file.bin") to store a (possibly compound) lisp object to disk, and restore to get it back.

clache

General caching facility. Cache any Lisp object on disk or in memory. LLGPL.; built on cl-store; a cache can be persistent or have an expiration time.; exposes the store locations too.

conspack

binary serialization.

cl-naive-store

a naive persisted, in memory (lazy loading), indexed, document store for Common Lisp. MIT.; see the introductory blog post; dare we add: used in production by the author's company (ASTN Group, see awesome-lisp-companies)

cl-binary-store

A fast Common Lisp binary serializer/deserializer. BSD_3Clause. See reddit announce (2025).; "A super fast and customizable serializer/deserializer of Common Lisp objects to/from a very compact binary format. Equality of objects, circular references, and the full Common Lisp type system are…

cl-marshal

Simple and fast serialization of all kinds of Common Lisp data structures. MIT.; Only minimal changes required to make your CLOS objects serializable.

Caching (memoization)

function-cache

A Common Lisp function caching / memoization library. BSD.

Compression / decompression

chipz

A decompression library. 3-clause BSD.

Salza2

A library for creating compressed data. FreeBSD.

zippy

A ZIP archive format library based on 3bz. zlib.

archive

a library for reading and creating archive (tar, cpio) files. BSD_3Clause. A pure Common Lisp replacement for the tar program.; see its recent fork cl-tar (2021). Announce.

deoxybyte-gzip

Common Lisp interface to zlib via CFFI. GPL3.; This system provides gzip and gunzip functions and a Gray-streams implementation, both built on a set of lower-level zlib functions.

Configuration

py-configparser

reads and writes Python's ConfigParser-like configuration files. MIT.

envy

Configuration switcher. FreeBSD.

chameleon

a configuration management library shipped with profile support. MIT.

Date and time

local-time

A development library for manipulating date and time information in a semi-standard manner. 3-clause BSD.

local-time documentation

, github mirror.

fuzzy-dates

A library to fuzzily parse date and time strings. Zlib.

cl-date-time-parser

Parse date-time-string, liberally. Hides the difference between date-time formats, and enables to manage date and time as the one date-time format. MIT.

chronicity

A natural language date and time parse, to parse strings like "3 days from now". BSD_3Clause.

local-time-duration

Duration processing library built on top of local-time. MIT.; see this fork: humanize-duration, that outputs only significant parts of a duration object. Has localization suport.

iso-8601-date

Miscellaneous date routines in Common Lisp, based around the ISO 8601 string representation. LLGPL.

calendar-times

a calendar time library implemented on top of the LOCAL-TIME library. It features zoned calendar times and calculations.; see also: calendar-date - a Gregorian calendar date library. MIT.

periods

manipulating date/time objects at a higher level. With series-compatible data structure. BSD_3Clause.; with some documentation

stopclock

a library for measuring time using (stop)clocks. It allows you to create a clock, pause it, resume it and change its speed. Apache2.0.

Data validation

clavier

General purpose validation library for Common Lisp. MIT.

ratify

A collection of utilities to ratify, validate and parse inputs. zlib.

json-schema

A library for validating data against schemas of drafts 4, 6, 7, and 2019-09 of the JSON Schema standard. LLGPL.

sanity-clause

a data serialization/contract library for Common Lisp. Schemas can be property lists or class-based, allowing to check slots' types during make-instance. LLGPL.

cl-semver

Implementation of the Semantic Versioning Specification. MIT

Developer utilities

repl-utilities

Ease common tasks at the REPL (print documentation, print external symbols, call hooks when loading a package,…). BSD_2Clause.

flight-recorder

a robust REPL history facility.

tracer

tracing profiler for Common Lisp, with output suitable for display in Chrome’s/Chromium’s Tracing Viewer. MIT.

cl-flamegraph

A wrapper around SBCL's statistical profiler, to generate FlameGraph charts for Common Lisp programs. BSD.

supertrace

Superior Common Lisp trace functionality for debugging/profiling. Trace many functions at once, use before and after hooks. BSD_2Clause.

printv

A batteries-included tracing and debug-logging macro. Apache2.

journal

a library for logging, tracing, record-and-replay testing and persistence. MIT.

brake

An extended breakpoint facility for Common Lisp. MIT.

cl-codegraph

Automatic Knowledge Graph of Common Lisp code via live image introspection.; Given a package loaded in the SBCL image, builds and maintains a graph of its symbols, class hierarchies, method specializations, call relationships, and metadata — all without parsing source code. Includes a live Emacs…

GTFL

A graphical terminal for Lisp, meant for Lisp programmers who want to debug or visualize their own algorithms. A graphical trace in the browser. BSD-style.

trivial-benchmark

Tiny benchmarking library. zlib.; a similar macro (benchmark) is part of trivial-time, providing support for more implementations (ABCL, Allegro, CCL, CLISP, ECL).; Indeed, most trivial-benchmark's metrics are only implemented on SBCL. On other implementations, it measures real and user-space time…

glyphs

A library for cutting down the verboseness of Common Lisp in places. GNU GPL3.

Lisp REPL core dumper

A portable wrapper to generate Lisp cores on demand to start REPL blazing fast. It can preload provided systems to help build a collection of specialized Lisp cores.

Documentation builders

Staple

a tool to generate documentation pages using an HTML template. Uses the existing README, adds docstrings, crossreferences and links to the CLHS. zlib.

mgl-pax

Exploratory programming environment and documentation generator. one may accomplish similar effects as with Literate Programming, but documentation is generated from code, not vice versa. Code is first, code must look pretty, documentation is code. MIT.; also PDF export; see this 40ants/doc fork:…

sphinxcontrib-cldomain

Extending Sphinx to cover Common Lisp. To build documentation with the same ease as sphinx would a Python project. GPL3; crossreferences, links to the CLHS, symbol index, search, and all Sphinx features.

Codex

A beautiful documentation system for Common Lisp. MIT.

QBook

generates HTML (or LaTeX) formatted code listings of Common Lisp source files. BSD_3Clause.; all comments started with 4 ; (";;;;") are interpreted as documentation. Enhance the documentation with headings and directives.; QBook acts as "a lightweight literate programming system, where Lisp code…

Declt

Reference manual generator for Common Lisp libraries. Builds a texinfo document that can be further processed into various formats, such as HTML or PDF. BSD.

cl-bibtex

A compatible re-implementation of the BibTeX program in Common Lisp, with a BST-to-CL compiler. GNU LGPL2.1.

adp

Common Lisp documentation generator using Scribble files. MIT.

An overview blog post with even more documentation generators:

and a dedicated site with reviews and demos: https://cl-doc-systems.github.io/

Documentation lookup

docbrowser

a server that generates documentation for the loaded systems on the fly.; Its main page presents a list of all loaded systems in your Lisp image. Click on one system, and you get a page with three panes: functions, classes and variables. Click on a function to see its source, in context, with line…

cl-livedocs

similar and newer, based on Webinfo.; full text search is enabled by default.

cl-docsearch

A tool to search documentation of lisp symbols in the current lisp image.; indexes and searches the documentation string too.

Files and directories

uiop

and its pathname package (replaces cl-fad). uiop is part of ASDF3 and as thus is shipped in many implementations. MIT.

pathname-utils

A collection of utilities to help with pathname operations. zlib.; no dependencies, doesn't access the filesystem.

filesystem-utils

deal with common problems with filesystems, such as listing files, probing file types, determining default directories, etc.

file-attributes

access to common file attributes (uid, gid, permissions, ctime, mtime, atime).

filepaths

Modern and consistent filepath manipulation for Common Lisp. LGPL3.; no dependencies, doesn't access the filesystem.

file-finder

File-object finder Common Lisp library. Enable rapid file search, inspection and manipulation. GPL3.

osicat

A lightweight operating system interface on POSIX-like systems, including Windows (directory iteration and deletion, file permissions, file-type identification, etc) Expat.; note: Osicat isn't a pure Lisp library, it relies on compiling C code and this might make your deployment harder.

ppath

Common Lisp's implementation of the Python's os.path module. BSD.

mmap

Portable mmap file memory mapping utility library. zlib.

nfiles

File persistence, watching, data synchronization, (per user profile) path resolution, and structured data retrieval. Has pre-defined classes for configuration files, remote fetched files, data files, Lisp-readable files and many others. BSD.

trivial-glob

Shell-style glob pattern matching and filesystem globbing for Common Lisp. MIT.; (glob "**/*.lisp")

file-notify

a cross-platform library for file change detection. zlib.

Git

cl-git

a CFFI interface to the libgit2 library. LGPL3.

legit

an interface to the Git binary. zlib.

git-api

Common Lisp library to access a git repository. It doesn't need git or libgit installed. BSD.

i18n

cl-i18n

an i18n library. Load translations from GNU gettext text or binary files or from its native format. Localisation helpers of plural forms. LLGPL.

gettext

a port of the gettext runtime to Common Lisp. GPL3.

fluent

implementation of Fluent, a modern localisation system. MPL-2.0.

translate

seamless language localization. LLGPL.

enchant

bindings for the Enchant spell-checker library. Public domain.

oxenfurt

A client library for the Oxford dictionary API. zlib.

language-codes

A database library for ISO language codes. zlib

system-locale

A library to retrieve the user's preferred language, so that your application may choose a sensible default. zlib.

multilang-documentation

Allows writing docstrings in multiple languages, for truly internationally documented libraries. zlib.

Linting, code formatting

sblint

a linter for Common Lisp source code using SBCL, suited for Reviewdog (slides). BSD_2Clause.

mallet

A sensible Common Lisp linter that catches real mistakes, not style. MIT.

ocicl

A modern dependency management tool with novel features. MIT.; project-local dependencies, code linting, project scaffolding, LLM-generated summaries of changes between package versions; securely distributed packages over TLS, all software packaged as OCI-compliant artifacts, and more.

trivial-formatter

code formatter for Common Lisp. MIT.

lisp-format

and cl-indentify.

Literate programming

literate-lisp

Load Common Lisp code blocks from Emacs' Org files. MIT.

erudite

Literate Programming System built with interactive development in mind. MIT.

papyrus

Papyrus makes your markdown executable with the reader macro of Common Lisp.MIT

Logging

log4cl

Logging framework modelled after Log4J. Apache2.0. Advanced integration with Slime.

log4cl-json

JSON appender extension. BSD.

verbose

A fast and highly configurable logging framework. zlib.

a-cl-logger

Logging library providing context sensitive logging of more than just strings to more than just local files or output streams. Features logstash support, json support, logger hierarchies, context sensitive logging, objects printed as an inspectable presentation,…

cl-fluent-logger

A Common Lisp structured logger for Fluentd.

Macro helpers

easy-macros

an easy way to write 90% of your macros. Apache2.0.

trivial-with-current-source-from

Helps macro writers produce better errors for macro users. GPL3.

Markdown

3bmd

a markdown -> html converter. MIT.

Package declarations

cl-reexport

when you want to import and re-export many symbols at once and :include or :exclude some.

PDF

cl-typesetting

and cl-pdf - cross-platform Common Lisp libraries for generating PDF files. FreeBSD.

cl-pslib

a (thin) wrapper around the pslib library for generating PostScript files. Also cl-pslib-barcode. LLGPL.

Project skeletons

cl-project

General modern project skeletons. LLGPL.

cl-project-with-docs

uses Sphinx and reStructured text to render nice and readable HTML documentation. BSD.

cl-cookieproject

Generate a ready-to-use Common Lisp project. Not in Quicklisp. BSD_3Clause.; test definitions, entry point to run from sources, build a binary, Roswell integration…

cookiecutter-lisp-game

An opinionated cookiecutter template for Common Lisp videogame projects. Allows to choose backend middleware library between liballegro, raylib and SDL2. Contains CI scripts using docker-lisp-gamedev to automatically build binaries for Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Security

cl-isolated

A restricted environment for Common Lisp code evaluation AGPL-3.0.

safe-read

a variant of READ secure against internbombing, excessive input and macro characters. BSD_2Clause.

secret-values

A Common Lisp library to reduce the risk of accidentally revealing secret values such as passwords.

privacy-output-stream

an output stream that masks secret strings with ****, based on secret-values. MIT.

System interface

machine-state

Retrieve machine state information about CPU time, memory usage, thread processing time, etc.

Other

babel

A charset encoding/decoding library. Expat.

fast-io

Fast octet-vector/stream I/O. 3-clause BSD.

named-readtables

Provides a readtable namespace, akin to package namespaces. 3-clause BSD.

simple-currency

A currency conversion library using daily information published by the ECB. FreeBSD.

trivial-garbage

A portable finalizer, weak hash-table and weak pointer API. Public domain.

trivial-utf8

A small library for doing UTF-8-based I/O. BSD.

See category
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