Koka
A Functional Language with Effect Types and Handlers

// A generator effect with one operation
effect yield<a>
  fun yield( x : a ) : ()

// Traverse a list and yield the elements
fun traverse( xs : list<a> ) : yield<a> () 
  match xs
    Cons(x,xx) -> { yield(x); traverse(xx) }
    Nil        -> ()

fun main() : console () 
  with fun yield(i : int)
    println("yielded " ++ i.show)   
  [1,2,3].traverse
// A generator effect with one operation
effectindex/yield: (V, E, V) -> V yieldindex/yield: (V, E, V) -> V<aa: V>
  fun yield( xx: $267 : aa: V ) : (std/core/types/unit: V)std/core/types/unit: V

// Traverse a list and yield the elements
fun traverseindex/traverse: forall<a> (xs : list<a>) -> (yield<a>) ()( xsxs: list<$325> : liststd/core/types/list: V -> V<aa: V> )result: -> (yield<359>) () : yieldindex/yield: (V, E, V) -> V<aa: V> (std/core/types/unit: V)std/core/types/unit: V 
  match xsxs: list<$325>
    Consstd/core/types/Cons: forall<a> (head : a, tail : list<a>) -> list<a>(xx: $325,xxxx: list<$325>) -> { yieldindex/yield: (x : $325) -> (yield<$325>) ()(xx: $325); traverseindex/traverse: (xs : list<$325>) -> (yield<$325>) ()(xxxx: list<$325>) }
    Nilstd/core/types/Nil: forall<a> list<a>        -> (std/core/types/Unit: ())std/core/types/Unit: ()

fun mainindex/main: () -> console ()()result: -> console () : consolestd/core/console/console: X (std/core/types/unit: V)std/core/types/unit: V 
  withhandler: (() -> <yield<int>,console> ()) -> console () fun yieldyield: (i : int) -> console ()(ii: int : intstd/core/types/int: V)
    printlnstd/core/console/string/println: (s : string) -> console ()("yielded "literal: string
count= 8 ++std/core/types/(++): (x : string, y : string) -> console string ii: int.showstd/core/int/show: (i : int) -> console string)   
  [std/core/types/Cons: forall<a> (head : a, tail : list<a>) -> list<a>1literal: int
dec  = 1
hex8 = 0x01
bit8 = 0b00000001,2literal: int
dec  = 2
hex8 = 0x02
bit8 = 0b00000010,3literal: int
dec  = 3
hex8 = 0x03
bit8 = 0b00000011]std/core/types/Nil: forall<a> list<a>.traverseindex/traverse: (xs : list<int>) -> <yield<int>,console> ()

Welcome to Koka – a strongly typed functional-style language with effect types and handlers.

Install Get Started Documentation Github

Note: Koka v3 is a research language that is currently under development and not ready for production use. Nevertheless, the language is stable and the compiler implements the full specification. The main things lacking at the moment are (async) libraries and package management.

News:

2025-07-17: Koka v3.2.0 released. Now use the keyword hole do denote holes in a constructor context, while underscore is used to automatically eta-expand arguments (e.g. [1].map(inc(_)))). Implicit resolving requires unique solutions now, but takes scoping into account. No more qualified types but we use instead implicit phantom parameters that are resolved by the compiler. See the whatsnew for more information.
2025-07-17: Two of the distinguished paper awards at PLDI'25 went to papers that use Koka: “Practical Type Inference with Levels”, Andong Fan, Han Xu, and Ningning Xie (pdf), and “Principal Type Inference under a Prefix”, Daan Leijen and Wenjia Ye (pdf). The latter formalizes the static overloading resolution used in the Koka language.
2025-07-03: Koka v3.1.3 released. Add applier syntax .() where x.f.(42) is sugar for (x.f)(42) which can be convenient when calling functions selected from a struct. Also adds support for lazy constructors – see “First-order Laziness” by Anton Lorenzen, Daan Leijen, Wouter Swierstra, and Sam Lindley (ICFP'25) pdf.
2024-05-30: Koka v3.1.2 released which fixes Koka installs outside a VS Code workspace.
2024-05-30: Read the paper on “The Functional Essence of Binary Search Trees” by Anton Lorenzen, Daan Leijen, Sam Lindley, and Wouter Swierstra to be presented at PLDI'24 on June 27.
2024-05-30: View the talk on the design and compilation of efficient effect handlers in Koka as part of Xavier Leroy's beautiful lecture series on control structures and algebraic effects at the Collège de France (with many other invited talks available online).
2024-03-04: Koka v3.1.1 released with a language server crash fix.
2024-02-14: Koka v3.1.0 released with a concurrent build system and improved language service over the stdio protocol. Redesign of named effect typing to match the formal system more closely. See samples/handlers/named for examples.
2024-01-25: Koka v3.0.4 released with improved VS Code hover and inlay information. Splits std/core in multiple modules, fixes bug in infinite expansion for implicits and various other small improvements.
2024-01-13: Koka v3.0.1 released with improved VS Code integration and inlay hints. Initial support for locally qualified names and implicit parameters (see the samples/syntax). Various small bug fixes.
2023-12-30: Koka v2.6.0 released with VS Code language integration with type information, jump to definition, run test functions directly from the editor, automatic Koka installation, and many more things. Special thanks to Tim Whiting and Fredrik Wieczerkowski for all their work on making this possible!
2023-12-27: Update of the technical report on “The functional essence of binary trees” where we use fully-in-place programming and the new hole contexts to create fully verified functional implementations of binary search tree algorithms with performance on par with imperative C implementations.
2023-07-03: Koka v2.4.2 released: add support for fip and fbip keywords described in “FP²: Fully in-Place Functional Programming” (ICFP'23) [pdf]. Various fixes and performance improvements.
2021-02-04 (pinned) The Context Free youtube channel posted a short and fun video about effects in Koka (and 12 (!) other languages).
2021-09-01 (pinned) The ICFP'21 tutorial “Programming with Effect Handlers and FBIP in Koka” is now available on youtube.
2022-02-07: Koka v2.4.0 released: improved specialization and int operations, add rbtree-fbip sample, improve grammar (pub (instead of public, remove private (as everything is private by default now)), final ctl (instead of brk), underscores in number literals, etc), rename double to float64, various bug fixes.
2021-12-27: Koka v2.3.8 released: improved int performance, various bug fixes, update wasm backend, initial conan support, fix js backend.
2021-11-26: Koka v2.3.6 released: maybe-like types are already value types, but now also no longer need heap allocation if not nested (and [Just(1)] uses the same heap space as [1]), improved atomic refcounting (by Anton Lorenzen), improved specialization (by Steven Fontanella), various small fixes, add std/os/readline, fix build on freeBSD
2021-10-15: Koka v2.3.2 released, with initial wasm support (use --target=wasm, and install emscripten and wasmtime), improved reuse specialization (by Anton Lorenzen), and various bug fixes.
2021-09-29: Koka v2.3.1 released, with improved TRMC optimizations, and improved reuse (the rbtree benchmark is as fast as C++ now), and faster effect operations. Experimental: allow elision of -> in anonymous function expressions (e.g. xs.map( fn(x) x + 1 )) and operation clauses. Command line options changed a bit with .koka as the standard output directory.
2021-09-20: Koka v2.3.0 released, with new brace elision and if/match conditions without parenthesis. Updated the javascript backend using ES6 modules and BigInt. new module std/num/int64, improved effect operation performance.
2021-09-05: Koka v2.2.1 released, with initial parallel tasks, the binary-trees benchmark, and brace elision.
2021-08-26: Koka v2.2.0 released, improved simplification (by Rashika B), cross-module specialization (Steven Fontanella), and borrowing annotations with improved reuse analysis (Anton Lorenzen).
2021-08-26: At 12:30 EST was the live Koka tutorial at ICFP'21, see it on youtube.
2021-08-23: “Generalized Evidence Passing for Effect Handlers”, by Ningning Xie and Daan Leijen presented at ICFP'21. See it on youtube or read the paper.
2021-08-22: “First-class Named Effect Handlers”, by Youyou Cong, Ningning Xie, and Daan Leijen presented at HOPE'21. See it on youtube or read the paper.
2021-06-23: Koka v2.1.9 released, initial cross-module specialization (by Steven Fontanella).
2021-06-17: Koka v2.1.8 released, initial Apple M1 support.
The Perceus paper won a distinguished paper award at PLDI'21!
2021-06-10: Koka v2.1.6 released.
2021-05-31: Koka v2.1.4 released.
2021-05-01: Koka v2.1.2 released.
2021-03-08: Koka v2.1.1 released.
2021-02-14: Koka v2.0.16 released.
2020-12-12: Koka v2.0.14 released.
2020-12-02: Koka v2.0.12 released.
2020-11-29: Perceus technical report published (pdf).

Why Koka?

Install

Install with the VS Code editor

The easiest way to start with Koka is to use the excellent VS Code editor and install the Koka extension. Go to the extension panel, search for Koka and install the official extension as shown on the right.

Installing the extension also prompts to install the latest Koka compiler on your platform (available for Windows x64, MacOS x64 and arm64, and Linux x64).

Once installed, the samples directory is opened. You can also open this manually from the command panel (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P), and running the Koka: Open samples command (when you start typing the command will surface to the top). Open for example the basic/caesar.kk file: When you click run debug (or optimized) Koka compiles and runs the function, showing the output in the VS Code terminal.

vscode-caesar

Press and hold ctrl+alt (or ctrl+option on MacOS) to show inlay hints – showing inferred types, fully qualified names, and implicit arguments.

vscode-inlay-off

versus

vscode-inlay-on

Manual Installation

On Windows (x64), open a cmd prompt and use:

curl -sSL -o %tmp%\install-koka.bat https://github.com/koka-lang/koka/releases/latest/download/install.bat && %tmp%\install-koka.bat

On Linux (x64) and macOS (x64, arm64 (M1/M2)), you can install Koka using:

curl -sSL https://github.com/koka-lang/koka/releases/latest/download/install.sh | sh

(If you previously installed Koka on macOS using brew, do an brew uninstall koka first). On other platforms it is usually easy to build Koka from source instead.

After installation, verify if Koka installed correctly:

$ koka
 _         _
| |       | |
| | _ ___ | | _ __ _
| |/ / _ \| |/ / _' |  welcome to the koka interactive compiler
|   ( (_) |   ( (_| |  version 2.4.0, Feb  7 2022, libc x64 (gcc)
|_|\_\___/|_|\_\__,_|  type :? for help, and :q to quit

loading: std/core
loading: std/core/types
loading: std/core/hnd
>

Type :q to exit the interactive environment.

For detailed installation instructions and other platforms see the releases page. It is also straightforward to build the compiler from source.

Get started with the compiler