It's not enough for next-gen UX design tools to be code-based. They have to be code-native (liked developer tools), able to read and write code without any intermediate data formats, and they have to do in in a way that doesn't compromise how designers think and prefer to work. As soon as a tool isn't code-native, you run into the multiple sources of truth problem. How to translate between data formats. You run into one way code exports/generation. You run into manual copy/paste by developers to bridge across disconnected systems. Code-native is the endgame for design tools. As we push into AR, VR and more 3D, static 2D vector-based canvases will fall short and out of favor. "Inspect", "Export", "Copy/paste", "Integrate with code". When they disappear from design tools, we've arrived at code-native.

Yes! It might also be interesting to recognize that the usual text/code is merely another representation of the ast, which in turn is a representation for a deeper meaning; which may be beneficial to treat as the "real" source of truth.

Exactly. The work we're doing focuses on the real-time editing of the AST on a canvas. The text is just how the AST is persisted to/from disk.