Hacker News front pageJul 12, 2026, 04:07 UTC+8

Ant: a 9 MB JavaScript runtime with its own engine and a VM sandbox

Show HN: Ant – A JavaScript runtime and ecosystem

Ant is a hand-built JS runtime in a 9.1 MB binary, not wrapping V8, JSC, or SpiderMonkey. Cold-starting Hono takes 5.4 ms—less than half of Bun's time—and package installs claim up to 40x faster than npm. It includes a KVM-level sandbox for untrusted code and an npm-compatible registry at ants.land. Currently supports macOS and Linux on arm64/x86_64.

Why it matters: From-scratch engine, 9.1 MB binary, 5.4 ms cold start, built-in KVM sandbox—every claim is concrete and verifiable, not marketing fluff. HKR all hit, but the project just launched with no production track record, so I'm holding below 80 for now.

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The numbers are what make this worth a click: a 9.1 MB binary that cold-starts Hono in 5.4 ms—less than half of Bun's time. It's not wrapping V8; the Ant Silver engine is hand-built, and it ships with a KVM-level sandbox that mounts filesystems read-only and denies network by default. The ants.land registry speaks the npm protocol, and package installs claim up to 40x faster than npm.

I'd discount this a bit. It only supports macOS and Linux on arm64/x86_64 right now—no Windows. The "compat-table 100%" claim needs scrutiny on which test cases were run; custom engines usually take time to iron out ecosystem edge cases. Also, this is a solo dev project, so the long-term maintenance and security audit cadence is an open question.

If those cold-start and install numbers hold up in real projects, this gets interesting for serverless and edge use cases. For now, it reads more like a compelling tech demo than something production-ready.

Source: Hacker News front page · antjs.org
Published: Jul 12, 2026, 04:07 UTC+8 · Jul 12, 2026