A developer has replaced nearly every piece of software on their desktop with custom-built alternatives, creating a computing environment tailored to exactly one person. The project, documented over several weeks, demonstrates that the cost of building bespoke tools has dropped significantly, making it feasible for individual developers to escape the configuration of off-the-shelf software.
Overview
The system consists of two layers: CHasm, a pure x86_64 assembly layer that handles pixel painting and keyboard input, and Fe₂O₃, an application layer written in Rust that sits on a shared TUI library called crust. The developer replaced their window manager, status bar, screen locker, terminal emulator, login shell, file viewer, text editor, file manager, email/RSS/chat client, calendar, astronomy panel, and movie/series browser. The only GUI program still in regular use is Firefox.
The vim replacement
The most notable swap was the text editor. After 25 years of using vim for every email, article, blog post, and line of code, the developer built a replacement called scribe in three days. The first commit was on May 1st; by May 3rd, vim was no longer in use. Scribe is modal like vim but omits roughly 90 percent of vim's features while adding writer-specific tweaks: soft-wrap by default, a reading mode with Limelight-style focus, AI integration in the prompt, and HyperList editing with full syntax highlighting. Persistent registers shared across concurrent sessions are also included.
Why this is possible now
The developer notes that writing your own editor, file manager, or window manager used to be a project of years. The economics did not work for most people, even programmers. With Rust, Claude Code as a development assistant, and extensive documentation for TUI programming, the barrier has dropped by orders of magnitude. The gap between "I wish my editor did X" and having an editor that does X can now be closed in a few evenings of focused work.
Tradeoffs
The software is not designed for anyone else. The developer explicitly states that none of it is built for general use — it is shaped to one person's hand positions, thinking patterns, and workflow preferences. There is no configurability for different preferences, no support for corner cases the developer never hits, and no documentation for other users. Decisions take seconds because there is no committee.
When to use it
This approach is relevant for developers who find themselves repeatedly wishing for small changes in their daily tools and who have the skills to build in Rust or assembly. The developer suggests that even replacing a single tool — an editor, a file manager, a status bar — can be worth a weekend. The project is