For my personal project (http://plash.io/) I try to archive something similar by:

* Only use technology that already exists for at least 10 years and is widely used: bash python3 C and Linux

* No external libraries, only the python standard library and the C standard library

* No monolithic design, it's a mix of about 30 standalone utilities that I can rewrite gradually if for example ever python3 becomes out of fashion.

* Keep the line count low

* Rely on proven abstractions like processes, files, pipes, the environment list, etc