diff --git a/R/repr.R b/R/repr.R
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..2b85ea56
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R/repr.R
@@ -0,0 +1,77 @@
+
+
+repr = function(x, ...) {
+  UseMethod("repr")
+}
+
+#' Representation for something that may or may not have a `"repr"` attribute.
+#' If it is not, we just use deparse(), otherwise we use the repr as
+#' reported by that selector.
+#' @export
+repr.default = function(x, ...) {
+  if (test_string(attr(x, "repr"))) {
+    attr(x, "repr")
+  } else {
+    # TODO: need to set options explicitly because systems may have different default settings
+    # TODO2: multi line deparsing is a problem.
+    str_collapse(deparse(x), sep = "\n")
+  }
+}
+
+repr.R6 = function(x, ...) {
+  stop("Not representable.")
+}
+
+repr.Representable = function(x, ...) {
+  x$repr(...)
+}
+
+Representable = R6Class("Representable",
+  public = list(
+    repr = function(...) {
+      stop("repr() not implemented")
+    }
+  )
+)
+
+Representable_In_Dict = R6Class("Representable_In_Dict",
+  inherit = "Representable",
+  public = list(
+    initialize = function() {
+      level = 0
+      while (is.null(private$.repr_dictkey)) {
+        level = level - 1
+        initfun = sys.function(level)
+        if ("new" %in% names(environment(initfun))) {
+          stop("Representable_In_Dict has uninitialized .repr_dictkey that could not be inferred.")
+        }
+        possible_id = names(formals(initfun))
+        if (test_string(possible_id)) {
+          private$.repr_dictkey = possible_id
+        }
+      }
+    },
+    repr = function(...) {
+      sprintf("%s(\"%s\")", self$repr_dictionary, self$repr_dictkey)
+    }
+  ),
+  active = list(
+    repr_dictionary = function(val) {
+      if (!missing(val)) {
+        stop("repr_dictionary is read-only.")
+      }
+      private$.repr_dictionary
+    },
+    repr_dictkey = function(val) {
+      if (!missing(val)) {
+        stop("repr_dictkey is read-only.")
+      }
+      private$.repr_dictkey
+    }
+  ),
+  private = list(
+    .repr_dictionary = NULL,
+    .repr_dictkey = NULL
+  )
+)
+