hackable

The Base42 hackable desktop: self-written replacements for the day-to-day system software we use, in the suckless spirit — small C programs, compiled-in configuration, minimal dependencies, -Wall -Wextra -pedantic clean.

It comes in two shapes:

• A distro. hos is the hackable tools as a bootable live ISO, from the kernel up: hos's own init, initramfs, boot scripts, service manager and installer over packages and a kernel from the Void repositories — the whole desktop as an operating system, sources included.
• Separate apps. Every tool lives in its own repository, builds on its own, and runs on any Linux desktop. They interoperate only through standard protocols (EWMH, XEmbed, D-Bus, OSC escape sequences, sendmail-compatible SMTP), so each one can replace — or be replaced by — its third-party counterpart. Use one, a few, or all of them.

This meta-repo ties the pieces together. The submodule pins are a known-good set: these exact commits run together as a live desktop session, and are what a hos ISO is built from.

The tools

Project	What it is
hed	Terminal text editor, plugin-first architecture, tree-sitter highlighting, swappable vim/emacs/vscode keymaps
hterm	SDL2 terminal emulator; SDL-free emulator core with headless tests
hwm	Scrollable-column (niri-style layout, dwm-style construction) X11 tiling window manager
hws	Niri-style workspace/window overview overlay for X11 (EWMH, live composited thumbnails)
htray	System tray + status bar overlay for X11 (XEmbed, single file)
hnd	Desktop notification daemon (org.freedesktop.Notifications over raw libdbus, single file)
hbg	Background setter/rotator: cover-scales images onto each monitor, esetroot pixmap protocol (single file)
hmenu	Rofi-style launcher (item lists from shell commands, matching delegated to fzf --filter, single file)
hml	Mail in one binary: IMAP/Maildir sync with mbsync-compatible on-disk state, SMTP send, notmuch-style search index (SQLite FTS5)
hstt	Speech-to-text dictation: hotkey-toggled recording, local whisper.cpp transcription, types into the focused window (single file)
hweb	Vim-like WebKitGTK browser: one window per process, modal keys, events on stdout / commands on stdin
hai	Hackable AI: agentic loop in C for any OpenAI-compatible model (tool calling, SSE streaming), daemon + client, speaks and listens through piper and hstt
hsm	Runit-style service supervisor (daemon hsmd + client hsm); runs as PID 1 on hos

The distro

hos turns the toolset into a bootable live ISO: packages and kernel from the Void repositories (xbps), and above them hos's own — a static C init in an initramfs it builds itself, hsmd as pid 1 with hos's boot scripts, a grub menu, an installer — with the tools' sources on the ISO at /usr/src/hackable and binaries symlinked into /bin. Boot it, edit the source, make, and you are running your change. The ISO is described by PACKAGES, SERVICES, IGNORE, overlay/ and init/; no void-mklive, no dracut.

cd hos
make iso     # build the ISO (no sudo: root work runs in a user namespace)
make qemu    # boot the newest ISO under kvm

The apps, on your existing desktop

git clone --recursive https://github.com/42dotmk/hackable
cd hackable
make            # build every project
make install    # symlink everything into ~/.local/bin (no sudo)
make hwm        # or build (and cd hwm && make install) just one

Each subproject's own README covers its usage and per-project install. Nothing here assumes the rest of the set is present.

Conventions

• Pure C11, minimal dependencies; the compiler flags are the linter.
• Configuration is compiled in (config.h): change the source, recompile. Exception in progress: hmenu pilots hconf, a tiny reader that overlays ~/.config/hackable/<tool>.conf onto the compiled-in defaults; if it holds, the other tools adopt it.
• make builds, make install symlinks into ~/.local/bin, make clean cleans — in every repo.
• The tools interoperate only through standard protocols, so each remains usable with third-party counterparts.