Satisfyingly short (in lines, not in time writing) some of the longer part is hexadecimal parsing, that doesn't come natively in JQ, I started doing polygon math from part 1, and what took me the longest was properly handling the area contributed by the perimeter. (I toyed with trying very annoying things like computing the outmost vertex at each turn, which is complicated by the fact that you don't initially know which way the digger is turning, and needing previous and next point to disambiguate).

#!/usr/bin/env jq -n -R -f

reduce (
  # Produce stream of the vertices, for the position of the center
  foreach (
    # From hexadecimal representation
    # Get inputs as stream of directions = ["R", 5]
    inputs | scan("#(.+)\\)") | .[0] / ""
    | map(
        if tonumber? // false then tonumber
        else {"a":10,"b":11,"c":12,"d":13,"e":14,"f":15}[.] end
      )
    | [["R","D","L","U"][.[-1]], .[:-1]]
    | .[1] |= (
      # Convert base-16 array to numeric value.
      .[0] * pow(16;4) +
      .[1] * pow(16;3) +
      .[2] * pow(16;2) +
      .[3] * 16 +
      .[4]
    )
  ) as $dir ([0,0];
    if   $dir[0] == "R" then .[0] += $dir[1]
    elif $dir[0] == "D" then .[1] += $dir[1]
    elif $dir[0] == "L" then .[0] -= $dir[1]
    elif $dir[0] == "U" then .[1] -= $dir[1]
    end
  )
  # Add up total area enclosed by path of center
  # And up the are of the perimeter, perimeter * 1/2 + 1
) as [$x, $y] ( #
  {prev: [0,0], area: 0, perimeter_area: 1  };

  # Adds positve rectangles
  # Removes negative rectangles
  .area += ( $x - .prev[0] ) * $y |

  # Either Δx or Δy is 0, so this is safe
  .perimeter_area += (($x - .prev[0]) + ($y - .prev[1]) | abs) / 2 |

  # Keep current position for next vertex
  .prev = [$x, $y]
)

# Output total area
| ( .area | abs ) + .perimeter_area

Satisfyingly very well suited to JQ once you are used to the stream, foreach(init; mod; extract) and recurse(exp) [where every output item of exp as a stream is fed back into recurse] operators. It's a different way of coding but has a certain elegance IMO. This was actually quick to implement, along with re-using the treating a range as a primitive approach of the seeds-to-soil day.

#!/usr/bin/env jq -n -sR -f

inputs / "\n\n"

# Parse rules
| .[0] / "\n"
| .[] |= (
  scan("(.+){(.+)}")
  | .[1] |= (. / ",")
  | .[1][] |= capture("^((?＜reg＞.)(?＜op＞[^\\d]+)(?＜num＞\\d+):)?(?＜to＞[a-zA-Z]+)$")
  | ( .[1][].num | strings ) |= tonumber
  | {key: .[0], value: (.[1]) }
) | from_entries as $rules |

# Split part ranges into new ranges
def split_parts($part; $rule_seq):
  # For each rule in the sequence
  foreach $rule_seq[] as $r (
    # INIT = full range
    {f:$part};

    # OPERATE =
    # Adjust parts being sent forward to next rule
    if $r.reg == null then
      .out = [ .f , $r.to ]
    elif $r.op == "＜" and .f[$r.reg][0] ＜ $r.num then
      ([ .f[$r.reg][1], $r.num - 1] | min ) as $split |
      .out = [(.f | .[$r.reg][1] |= $split ), $r.to ] |
      .f[$r.reg][0] |= ($split + 1)
    elif $r.op == "＞" and .f[$r.reg][1] ＞ $r.num then
      ([ .f[$r.reg][0], $r.num + 1] | max ) as $split |
      .out = [(.f | .[$r.reg][0] |= $split), $r.to ]  |
      .f[$r.reg][1] |= ($split - 1)
    end;

    # EXTRACT = parts sent to other nodes
    # for recursion call
    .out | select(all(.[0][]; .[0] ＜ .[1]))
  )
;

[ # Start with full range of possible sings in input = "in"
  [ {x:[1,4000],m:[1,4000],a:[1,4000],s:[1,4000]} , "in" ] |

  # Recusively split musical parts, into new ranges objects
  recurse(
    if .[1] == "R" or .[1] == "A" then
      # Stop recursion if "Rejected" or "Accepted"
      empty
    else
      # Recursively split
      split_parts(.[0];$rules[.[1]])
    end
    # Keep only part ranges in "Accepted" state
  ) | select(.[1] == "A") | .[0]

  # Total number if parts in each object is the product of the ranges
  | ( 1 + .x[1] - .x[0] ) *
    ( 1 + .m[1] - .m[0] ) *
    ( 1 + .a[1] - .a[0] ) *
    ( 1 + .s[1] - .s[0] )
  # Sum total number of possibly accepted musical parts
] | add

EDIT: Less-thans and greater-thans replaced by fullwidth version, because lemmy is a hungry little goblin.

In hindsight this is is searching for the shortest path in a graph, making sure that each square is actually two nodes, for when approached vertically or horizontally. My shcool days are distant now, and i wonder how far from optimal my implementation is ^^.

Part two was only a small edit from part one for me, and the code actually ran faster! from ~45s -> ~20s.

In my case it was a lot more of headbanging, the traverse function i wrote for part a was way to slow, since JQ isn't happy with loop-heavy assignments (if not buried within C-implemented builtins). Part a completed in ~2seconds, which was never going to do (in hindsight it would have taken me less time to simply let it run slowly), I had to optimize it so that the beams don't step one square at a time, but shoot straight to any obstacle.

It took me waaaay too long to troubleshoot it into something that actually worked. I'm sure there's a compact implementation out there, but my part b ended up looking very meaty (and still took ~30s to run): https://github.com/zogwarg/advent-of-code/blob/main/2023/jq/16-b.jq

#!/usr/bin/env jq -n -R -f

# Dish to grid
[ inputs / "" ]

# Tilt UP
| transpose                       # Transpose, for easier RE use
| map(                            #
  ("#" + add) | [                 # For each column,   replace '^' with '#'
    scan("#[O.]*") | [            # From '#' get empty spaces and 'O' rocks
      "#", scan("O"), scan("\\.") # Let gravity do it's work.
    ]                             #
  ] | add[1:]                     # Add groups back together
 )                                #
| transpose                       # Transpose back

# For each row, count  'O'  rocks
| map(add | [scan("O")] | length)

# Add total load on "N" beam
| [0] + reverse | to_entries
| map( .key * .value ) | add

# Relevant portion
# oneCycle expects an array, of array of chars (3x3 eg: [[".","#","."],[".",".","."],["O",".","#"]])
def oneCycle:
  # Tilt UP          = T . MAP(scan) . T
  # Rotate           = T . MAP(reverse)
  # Titl UP . Rotate = T . MAP(scan) . Map(reverse) | T . T = Identity
  def tilt_up_rotate:
      transpose          # Gets subgroups    # Within each group,
                         # starring with "#" # In order 1 "#", x "O", y "." 
    | map( ("#" + add) | [ scan("#[^#]*")    | ["#", scan("O"), scan("\\.")] ] | add[1:])
    | map(reverse)
  ;
  # Tilt   North,            West,           South,            East
  tilt_up_rotate | tilt_up_rotate | tilt_up_rotate | tilt_up_rotate
;

JQ does allow some nice sortcuts sometimes, again transpose is nice to have.

Further cleaned up version: https://github.com/zogwarg/advent-of-code/blob/main/2023/jq/12-b.jq

Also lost a fair amount of time not not noticing that the sequence should be joined with "?" not with "". (that'll teach me to always run on the example before the full input, when execution time is super long).

Execution time: 17m10s (without memoization a single row was taking multiple minutes, and there's 1000 rows ^^...)

EDIT: see massive improvement by running in parallel in reply.

I substituted the rows/columns, with multiplication by the expansion rate if they were all numbers. And then for each galaxy pair do a running sum by going “down” the “right” and adding the distance for each row and column crossed.

https://github.com/zogwarg/advent-of-code/blob/main/2023/jq/11-b.jq

transpose is nice to have in that approach.

#!/usr/bin/env jq -n -R -f
[
  # For each line, get numbers eg: [ [1,2,3] ]
  inputs / " " | map(tonumber) | [ . ] |

  # Until latest row is all zeroes
  until (.[-1] | [ .[] == 0] | all;
   . += [
     # Add next row, where for element(i) = prev(i+1) - prev(i)
     [ .[-1][1:] , .[-1][0:-1] ] | transpose | map(.[0] - .[1])
    ]
  )
  # Get extrapolated previous element for first row
  |  [ .[][0] ] | reverse | reduce .[] as $i (0; $i - . )
]

# Output sum of extapolations for all lines
| add

I'm pretty sure you could make this one line and unreadable ^^.