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theMackabu

138 karma · joined April 13, 2023

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theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
> Odd choice for a vibecoded project.

I'm using coding agents to accelerate implementation, not to replace understanding or review. The architecture, technical decisions, testing, and final responsibility are still mine, so I don't think "vibecoded" is an accurate description here.

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
this is very out of date, from February. please just check the repo or even run the tests
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
no sandbox on windows... yet!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
not anymore!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
> How is it so much smaller than V8 while also apparently including a package manager, a web server, a TypeScript compiler and a hypervisor?

Much less complex tiers of jit, no unicode ICU, and no startup js snapshot

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
would be cool to see!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
on linux its kvm, on darwin its hypervisor.framework, the memory is not upfront, by default 256mb is lazy allocated, and ~35mb are used by both ant + the vm. the kernel is https://nanos.org with patches to get ant+networking running smoothly
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
its pretty fast tbh, though third-party benches would be great to have!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
this is coming soon!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
this page is literally a inside joke, theres a reason /jobs doesn't work (im not hiring)
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
I dont know a single soul who uses the Anthropic `ant` cli....
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
yes! I will be making a roadmap like a comment here suggested, should help
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
this was flagging code from all the way back in dec of 2025, back when this project was just some idea and not what it is today.

around feb thats when basically deleted the existing codebase and designed a much more reliable system from the ground up.

I knew the existing code was basically pure slop, and it was not the biggest issue then, now nothing goes past me unreviewed and untested

> To the author: I absolutely love what you're doing overall. Keep going! Just be careful, folks.

Thank you!

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
> interesting, is there any reason behind DNS/(ISP?) providers blocking .land domains?

tbh have not seen any reason behind it, just saw my ants.land get blocked a office firewall once while demoing

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
many, the engine has basically gone through a full rewrite since feb, that was still mostly interpt and missing many jit ops.

nightly will include benchmarks soon as well

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
thats very weird, its hosted on cloudflare workers atm. might be blocked by your isp? ive seen that happen to .land
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
unknown, have not tried. but let me know if it does work
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
LATEST RELEASE REQUIRES A STATIC RELEASE HOTFIX!!

https://github.com/theMackabu/ant/actions/runs/29167621329.

im very sorry everyone who tried to install and got a libcares error :(

theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
:D
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
its ~8mb including the entire runtime and node-compat work. pretty simple to embed anywhere as well
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
good idea!
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem
just got the thing for you actually! literally just finished a stable version last night, https://www.npmjs.com/package/ant-desktop. WIP still, chromium only renderer backend but webview and other backends coming soon as well. no local ant install needed as libant is bundled, when CI finishes ill have windows/linux builds too
theMackabu··on Show HN: Ant – A from-scratch JavaScript runtime in 9 MB
llvm is big/slow to compile and doesnt really fit js dynamic execution well in most cases
theMackabu··on Building a JavaScript runtime in one month
Four times actually, got a better reception on other sites though lwk
theMackabu··on Building a JavaScript runtime in one month
I have to say it was the GC, as i’ve had to fix it another 5 times since this article