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> The spec tests say: "Implementations are required to have every call consume some abstract resource

It's a nice detail for you to highlight, but surely that exists in the test spec specifically because the opcode spec doesn't mandate tail-call handling. If the latter did (a la Scheme), then the test spec would be updated to no longer have this note...?

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The proposed spec is to have an explicit tail call instruction separate from the regular call instruction for which resources must be used.

I think this would be the correct design even if tail calls were desired from the start. It makes for a better debugging experience and allows language implementations more control. (A trend in some functional languages is to require explicit annotation when tail recursion is desired, both to improve debugging for regular functions and to allow the compiler to check that you don’t accidentally stop being tail-recursive)

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