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Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

pneuma.computer

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Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#1

Post by evanbarke »

I've been building Pneuma, a desktop computing environment where software doesn't need to exist before you need it. There are no pre-installed applications. You boot to a blank screen with a prompt. You describe what you want: a CPU monitor, a game, a notes app, a data visualizer and a working program materializes in seconds. Once generated, agents persist. You can reuse them, they can communicate with each other through IPC, and you can share them through a community agent store. The idea isn't that everything is disposable. It's that creation is instant and the barrier to having exactly the tool you need is just describing it.

Under the hood: your input goes to an LLM, which generates a self-contained Rust module. That gets compiled to WebAssembly in under a second, then JIT-compiled and executed in a sandboxed Wasmtime instance. Everything is GPU-rendered via wgpu (Vulkan/Metal/DX12). If compilation fails, the error is automatically fed back for correction. ~90% first-attempt success rate.

The architecture is a microkernel: agents run in isolated WASM sandboxes with a typed ABI for drawing, input, storage, and networking. An agent crash can't bring down the system. Agents can run side by side, persist to a local store, and be shared or downloaded from the community store.

Currently it runs as a desktop app on Linux, macOS, and Windows. The longer-term goal is to run on bare metal and support existing ARM64 binaries alongside generated agents. A full computing environment where AI-generated software and traditional applications coexist.

Built entirely in Rust.

I built this because I think the traditional software model of find an app, install it, learn it, configure it; is unnecessary friction. If a computer can generate exactly the tool you need in the moment you need it, and then keep it around when it's useful, why maintain a library of pre-built software at all?

Free tier available (no credit card). There's a video on the landing page showing it in action.

Interested in feedback on the concept, the UX, and whether this is something you'd actually use.

Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI
pneuma.computer

Re: Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#3

Post by evanbarke »

subdomain wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool idea—I'm always game to try new operating systems! Recently been playing around with Playbit ( https://playbit.app/ ) Pneuma reminds me a little bit of Yansu AI, a project I saw recently on HN that proactively builds apps with AI ( https://yansu.app/ )

Thanks! Playbit is a cool project, I've followed it. The key difference with Pneuma is that the programs themselves are AI-generated at runtime. There's no toolchain the user interacts with, no editor, no compiler invocation. You describe what you want and the system handles everything from code generation through compilation to execution in one pass. Yansu is interesting too but it's a web app builder. Pneuma runs native GPU-rendered agents in WASM sandboxes on the desktop, so you can build things like real-time games and data visualizers with keyboard/mouse input, not just web UIs. The closest analogy is probably a microkernel where every userspace process is conjured by an LLM instead of installed from a package manager.

Re: Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#4

Post by bensyverson »

I think this is the way things are ultimately going (software as ephemerally generated based on your preferences), but at the moment, I can't see myself using these generated apps. Maybe it's just an aesthetic thing—have you experimented with personalized theming?

Re: Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#5

Post by subdomain »

evanbarke wrote: post #3
subdomain wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool idea—I'm always game to try new operating systems! Recently been playing around with Playbit ( https://playbit.app/ ) Pneuma reminds me a little bit of Yansu AI, a project I saw recently on HN that proactively builds apps with AI ( https://yansu.app/ )

Thanks! Playbit is a cool project, I've followed it. The key difference with Pneuma is that the programs themselves are AI-generated at runtime. There's no toolchain the user interacts with, no editor, no compiler invocation. You describe what you want and the system handles everything from code generation through compilation to execution in one pass. Yansu is interesting too but it's a web app builder. Pneuma runs n…

That makes sense—I think it's really interesting to see the possibilities of new software created purely by AI! I'm happy to offer feedback, my email is micah.blachman@gmail.com

Re: Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#7

Post by DarthCeltic85 »

evanbarke wrote: post #3
subdomain wrote: post #2

Seems like a cool idea—I'm always game to try new operating systems! Recently been playing around with Playbit ( https://playbit.app/ ) Pneuma reminds me a little bit of Yansu AI, a project I saw recently on HN that proactively builds apps with AI ( https://yansu.app/ )

Thanks! Playbit is a cool project, I've followed it. The key difference with Pneuma is that the programs themselves are AI-generated at runtime. There's no toolchain the user interacts with, no editor, no compiler invocation. You describe what you want and the system handles everything from code generation through compilation to execution in one pass. Yansu is interesting too but it's a web app builder. Pneuma runs n…

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Re: Show HN: I built an OS that is pure AI

#9

Post by erelong »

One critique is that I think it might be more efficient to just make use of existing software for some of these things rather than generate them on the fly (for something for example like a text editor), but I guess that will depend on how costly it is to run AI programs in the future (if it becomes much cheaper, then I could see your concept being taken up by more people)
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