alt Hacker NewsI do find the chartType part is not quite elegant, since templates should be more extensible. We will need to fix that.
For other parts, it's quite common in visualization and diagram etc libraries to have json, since they are easily portable in different rendering contexts.
I'm sure you know that JSON are object literals in TypeScript, there isn't really even a serialization process that's needed there. The AST/IR can still be in JSON, but the authoring surface can be a restricted subset that does not allow logic to execute, that way you can still get the type safety and functionality of TS when you need conditional/loops/logic without throwing away what TS already gives you.
I mean, it would be great if you guys would have like a "TSON" that is basically "JSON with type declaration and comments" from TS, which I think would just solve a lot of problem straight up. JSON itself is just too restrictive and comes with its own bracket verbosity tax.