Ok so a while back a ran into a problem when extending the slot options in CLOS. I went digging in SBCL and saw it uses a case based approach to process the slot arguments/options. The AMOP in page 95 shows a way to use the CLOS famework to 'teach' CLOS how to process custom options (for slots and classes) inserting a generic function to hook into called 'canonicalized-{defclass,slot}-option'. However due to bootstraping issues IIUC (which I probably don't) defgeneric isn't avaiable at the time that code is evaluated so that extension can't be included willy nilly in SBCL itself.** So it occured to me that maybe a CLOS implemented on top the implementations CLOS could provide a path of least resistance to continue improving the CLOS framework*.
* I use framework not in the software sense but in the general sense.
** A possibl