Hand-written executor over the dense bytecode produced by Lua.Compiler.Bytecode.

The dispatcher exists to test the hypothesis that integer-tagged opcode dispatch over a tuple-encoded instruction stream measurably outperforms the existing list-of-tagged-tuples interpreter. It implements a narrow subset of opcodes — arithmetic, comparison, logical ops, conditional :test, single-result :call, single-value :return, plus the surrounding plumbing (constants, moves, env/upvalue/global lookups). Anything the bytecode encoder rejects keeps its prototype on the interpreter via the bytecode-compiler's :fallback cascade.

Inter-mode calls grow the Erlang stack by one frame at the boundary. Dispatcher → dispatcher chains stay flat through frames. Mixed-mode programs (compiled prototype calling an interpreted one, or vice versa) pay a single recursive call at the transition; the recursion is bounded by the number of mode switches, not the call depth within a single mode.