Production-grade Zig, at scale.

OPEN SOURCE · MIT LICENSE

Quantum Zig Forge is a monorepo of 72 production programs and 132 coreutils replacements written in Zig — from HTTP routers and trading engines to a bare-metal operating system with 36 milestones. All open source. All working. All pushing the boundaries of what Zig can do.

View on GitHub Explore Programs

Production Programs

132

Coreutils Replacements

10×

Faster Than GNU (zfind)

CPU Architectures

Why This Exists

Building the Zig ecosystem from the ground up

Real Programs, Not Toy Examples

Every program in the forge is production-grade — proper error handling, real CLI interfaces, comprehensive edge case coverage. These aren't tutorials. They're tools you can actually deploy. HTTP servers that handle thousands of connections. Trading engines with sub-microsecond latency. A DNS server that speaks RFC 1035. A terminal multiplexer. A reverse proxy with load balancing. All in Zig.

Training Data for AI Coding

Zig is underrepresented in AI training data. When cloud companies scrape GitHub, they find C, Rust, Go — but very little high-quality Zig. Every program in this repo is structured, documented, and idiomatic Zig 0.16+. As AI models train on this code, they get better at writing Zig. The entire ecosystem benefits. That's the point.

Growing the User Base

Zig needs more than a great compiler — it needs a rich ecosystem of real-world examples. Developers evaluating Zig want to see: Can it do HTTP? Can it do crypto? Can it do PDF generation? Can it talk to AI APIs? This repo answers all of those questions with working code. 132 coreutils replacements prove Zig can do systems work at the same level as C.

Foundation for Zigix

The forge programs are the userspace for Zigix — a bare-metal OS written entirely in Zig with 36 completed milestones. Self-hosting (compiling Zig on Zigix) has been demonstrated on both ARM64 and x86_64. The long-term vision: an entire software stack from kernel to application, with zero C dependencies, targeting quantitative trading firms and fintech.

The Forge

72 standalone programs

Each program is a complete, buildable project with its own documentation, tests, and examples.

zig_ai AI

Universal AI CLI + agent SDK — Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, OpenAI. Agent mode with 17 tools, orchestrator DAG engine, C FFI with 40+ exports.

zig_inference AI

From-scratch ML inference — LLaMA text generation (GGUF) + Whisper speech-to-text (ggml). Quantized weights (Q4_0/Q8_0), mmap loading, multi-threaded matmul.

quantum_curl NETWORK

High-velocity HTTP router — JSONL battle plans, thread-per-request, ~2ms p99 latency.

http_sentinel NETWORK

Production HTTP client library — thread-safe, client-per-worker, GZIP, AI provider clients. Plus C FFI variant.

zig_reverse_proxy NETWORK

HTTP reverse proxy — round-robin/least-connections LB, health checks, WebSocket proxying.

zig_dns_server NETWORK

Authoritative DNS server — RFC 1035, zone files, A/AAAA/CNAME/MX/NS/TXT/SOA records.

zig_websocket NETWORK

RFC 6455 WebSocket — frame parsing, masking, handshake, fragmentation. ~71M decode ops/sec.

warp_gate NETWORK

P2P file transfer — NAT traversal (STUN/UDP hole punch), mDNS, ChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption.

financial_engine FINTECH

Sub-microsecond HFT engine with lock-free order book, zero-GC memory pools, Alpaca integration.

market_data_parser FINTECH

SIMD-accelerated exchange feed parser — 2M+ msg/sec, ~96ns/msg, Binance/Coinbase protocols.

timeseries_db FINTECH

Columnar time series DB — mmap zero-copy, SIMD delta encoding, B-tree indexing, 10M+ reads/sec.

simd_crypto_ffi CRYPTO

AVX-512 crypto primitives — SHA256 (10GB/s), BLAKE3 (15GB/s), ChaCha20 (20GB/s), AES-GCM (25GB/s). C FFI.

zig_secret_scanner SECURITY

Secret detection — 50+ patterns (AWS, GitHub, Stripe), entropy analysis, git hooks, SARIF output.

guardian_shield SECURITY

Linux security framework — seccomp-BPF, LD_PRELOAD, eBPF monitoring, fork bomb prevention.

zig_jail SECURITY

Syscall sandbox — seccomp-BPF, namespaces, capability dropping, security profiles.

zig_pdf_generator INFRA

Cross-platform PDF library — C FFI, WASM (362KB), invoices, dividend vouchers, contracts. Edge deployment.

distributed_kv INFRA

Raft KV store — leader election, WAL with CRC32, TTL, CAS, watch/subscribe.

wasm_runtime INFRA

WebAssembly runtime — MVP spec, WASI preview1, stack VM, multi-module linking.

terminal_mux INFRA

Terminal multiplexer — PTY management, pane splitting, 10K scrollback, Unix socket IPC.

zig_tui INFRA

Terminal UI framework — widgets, layouts, mouse support, 36 source files. Foundation for Zigix tools.

zigix_desktop ZIGIX

TUI window manager — tiled windows, PTY terminal emulation, PC-98 amber theme, launcher.

audio_forge MEDIA

Real-time audio DSP — lock-free ring buffer, SIMD EQ/compression/reverb, pure Zig codecs (WAV/FLAC/MP3).

stratum_engine CRYPTO

SIMD SHA256d mining with AVX2/AVX-512. Stratum V1 protocol, mempool monitoring, mbedTLS exchange connections.

zig_hal EMBEDDED

Hardware abstraction layer — MMIO register access, STM32F4, RP2040, ESP32-C3 targets.

Zig Core Utils

132 GNU coreutils, rewritten in Zig

SIMD-accelerated, parallel, and zero-copy. Every utility is a standalone project that builds with a single zig build.

zfind vs GNU find

10.2×

Zig 2.1s

GNU 21.1s

MPMC queue + getdents64 syscall

zsha256sum vs GNU sha256sum

3.5×

Zig 0.111s

GNU 0.388s

SIMD message schedule acceleration

zdu vs GNU du

3×

Zig ~1s

GNU ~3s

Parallel directory traversal

zjq vs jq

2×

Zig 31ms

GNU 61ms

Buffered I/O, 1MB JSON

132

Utilities across 8 categories

File operations, text processing, system info, encoding, path utilities, process control, and more. 72 at full GNU parity. Including custom extensions like zbench (hyperfine alternative), zregex (ReDoS-immune Thompson NFA), and zbackup (swap manager).

The Kernel

Zigix — a Zig OS from scratch

A bare-metal operating system written entirely in Zig — 36 completed milestones (16 kernel + 20 userspace), 97 syscall handlers (x86_64), 162 source files, and 133 userspace binaries on disk. Boots on ARM64 and x86_64 with UEFI. Self-hosting demonstrated on real hardware.

zigix — aarch64 UEFI boot

Zigix UEFI Bootloader v0.1
Loading kernel from \zigix\zigix-aarch64...
ELF: 4 segments, entry=0x40097ef8
Memory map: 85 entries
ExitBootServices: OK

========================================
 Zigix ARM64 aarch64 freestanding kernel
========================================
[boot] UART initialized (PL011)
[boot] UEFI boot detected
[mem]  PMM: 524288 pages, 520279 free
[smp]  CPU 0 online | CPU 1 online
[vfs]  ext2 mounted on /
[vfs]  procfs mounted on /proc
[vfs]  devfs mounted on /dev
[net]  TCP/IP stack initialized
[init] Starting zinit PID=1
[init] zhttpd listening on :80
[init] Starting zlogin on /dev/ttyS0

Zigix 0.1 (ttyS0)
login: █

Dual Architecture

Full kernel for both ARM64 (Cortex-A72, CIX P1) and x86_64 (Haswell+). SMP support, virtual memory, demand paging.

UEFI Boot

Custom PE32+ bootloader for both architectures. ELF loading, ExitBootServices, EL2 to EL1 transition. Boots on real UEFI firmware.

Self-Hosting

The Zig compiler compiles and runs programs directly on Zigix. Full compilation chain: parsing, semantic analysis, code generation, linking.

Full Userspace

ext2 read/write, tmpfs, procfs, devfs, TCP/IP networking, HTTP/SSH servers, fork/exec, pipes, signals, mmap, futex — 97 syscalls.

Security Hardened

Stack guard pages, kernel stack canaries, anti-rowhammer buffer rows, capability-based design. Safety-critical from the ground up.

Zero C Dependencies

Every line is Zig or inline assembly. No libc, no external libraries. The entire stack — kernel, drivers, filesystem, networking — pure Zig.

Open Source. MIT Licensed.

Every line. Every program. Every kernel module.

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