Build it from source

Rabbit is a research kernel in active development. There are no signed binaries and no GitHub releases yet; the only supported way to run it is to build it yourself.

Clone

Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/NicolasBecasAzagra/Rabbit.git

Requirements

Rust nightly	nightly-2026-10-24, pinned in rust-toolchain.toml.
Components	rust-src, llvm-tools, rustfmt, clippy.
Target	x86_64-unknown-linux-musl for the userland, installed by make musl-std.
QEMU	qemu-system-x86_64, 8.2 or newer.
Disk images	xorriso and mtools, only if you build disk images.

Install the pinned toolchain

The toolchain is pinned in rust-toolchain.toml. This command installs the required components.

Rust toolchain install

rustup toolchain install nightly-2026-10-24 \
  --component rust-src --component llvm-tools --component rustfmt --component clippy

Build, test and run

Build the kernel.

make build

Boot it in QEMU, serial on stdout.

make run

Host unit tests of every crate.

make test

The format of every crate.

make fmt-check

The clippy of every crate, for its target.

make clippy

The clippy of every crate, for the host.

make clippy-host

Build the agent and its initramfs.

make agent agent-initramfs

Print the path of the built kernel.

make print-kernel-path

Boot in QEMU

QEMU command

qemu-system-x86_64 -M q35 -m 512M \
  -kernel "$(make -s print-kernel-path)" \
  -display none -monitor none -no-reboot -serial stdio \
  -device isa-debug-exit,iobase=0xf4,iosize=0x04

The boot ends with exit status 33, which means boot OK.

Attach a debugger

Debug command

qemu-system-x86_64 -M q35 -m 512M \
  -kernel "$(make -s print-kernel-path)" -s -S \
  -display none -monitor none -no-reboot -serial stdio

gdbstub on port 1234, CPU halted. Attach with lldb "$(make -s print-kernel-path)" and gdb-remote 1234 on macOS, or gdb and target remote :1234 on Linux.

Repository layout

Crate / directory	What it does
`rabbit-arch`	x86_64 hardware access, port I/O, boot trampoline
`rabbit-bootinfo`	pure parsing of the PVH boot handover structures
`rabbit-drivers`	16550A UART, isa-debug-exit
`rabbit-mm`	paging, the buddy allocator, the heap, the mappings
`rabbit-sched`	the scheduler and its policy
`rabbit-elf`	the ELF64 reader
`rabbit-initramfs`	the reader of the cpio archive of the initramfs
`rabbit-kernel`	the no_std kernel binary
`rabbit-userland`	the test program that runs unmodified in ring 3
`rabbit-bench`	the workload that measures the kernel
`rabbit-infer`	the inference runtime, the grammar, the merge encoder
`rabbit-agent`	the agent loop: model, tool call, tool result
`rabbit-net`	the protocols of the network path
`rabbit-netclient`	the client of the network
`rabbit-netstream`	the stream of the network
`rabbit-http`	the HTTP of the agent
`bench`	the rig, the workloads, the reference build, the datasets
`docs`	architecture, boot protocol, benchmarking, VM setup
`scripts`	the generator of the interrupt stubs

The benchmarking document explains the protocol; the report contains every measurement.

Benchmarking Architecture