Why is the input_expr type private in Elixir Macro module?

Questions / Help
1

In the Macro module source code we can see that an AST (input of a macro) is:

@typedoc "Abstract Syntax Tree (AST)"
  @type t :: input

  @typedoc "The inputs of a macro"
  @type input ::
          input_expr
          | {input, input}
          | [input]
          | atom
          | number
          | binary

  @typep input_expr :: {input_expr | atom, metadata, atom | [input]}

Why is the input_expr type private instead of being public as I imagine it would be ? The same could be asked for output_expr. Does that mean that we are not supposed to parse ASTs directly but have to rely on functions provided by the Macro module like traverse and co ? I find it surprising because the types belong to the API i.e. input() is public but input_expr() is not.