A small suite of Linux tools written entirely in x86_64 assembly. No libc. No toolkits. No dynamic linking. No runtime. Just NASM source, direct syscalls, and the X11 wire protocol.

Each tool is a single static ELF binary. None of them depend on each other or on anything else outside the kernel and the X server.

Landing page: isene.org/chasm

The reason for releasing these tools into the Public Domain is not that you should use them. They are released for inspiration. Your use cases and preferences are different from mine. So instead of installing these and adopt your ways of working to these tools, you should rather: clone the repos, fire up Claude Code, prompt the changes you want and make the tools fit you.

Every binary on this screen is x86_64 assembly: tile holds the layout, strip + the asmites (the per-segment programs in chasm-bits) drive the status row, glass renders each pane (pseudo-transparency picks up the wallpaper), bare is the shell behind every prompt, and show is rendering syntax-highlighted source in both the left and bottom-right panes. No libc, no toolkit — the whole desktop talks straight to the kernel and the X server.

Stack them all together and you get a complete X session in under 500 KB of executable code, with zero shared libraries to update, patch, or break.

The suite shares one keyboard scheme: plain Mod4 is the desktop (workspaces, tabs, spot, frame's toggles), Mod4+Shift acts on a window or restarts a component, and Alt belongs to glass (unbound Alt+keys pass through to terminal apps as Meta). This repo ships chasm-keys, a small script that prints the complete live key table — the tile section is parsed straight from ~/.tilerc, so it never drifts from what is actually bound. Run it in a glass:

chasm-keys

Modern software stacks are deep. A terminal emulator routinely loads 30+ shared libraries before drawing a single character. A shell pulls in Python, GLib, OpenSSL transitively. Window managers depend on a toolkit that depends on a compositor that depends on... CHasm strips all of that away to find out what you actually need.

The answer turns out to be: surprisingly little. The Linux kernel gives you syscalls. X11 is just a Unix socket and a documented wire protocol. Everything else is a choice. CHasm is the choice to write everything yourself, from scratch, in the smallest reasonable language.

Every CHasm tool follows the same conventions:

• Pure x86_64 NASM, no libc, no int 0x80 (only syscall)
• Single static ELF, no dynamic linking, no .so dependencies
• Build pattern: nasm -f elf64 file.asm -o file.o && ld file.o -o file
• All BSS, no malloc — every buffer is statically allocated
• Zero-waste rule: features that aren't used pay no cost. Optional code paths are gated to be cold at rest.
• Plain config files: ~/.barerc, ~/.glassrc, ~/.tilerc — line- based key=value, no JSON/TOML/YAML parsers needed
• Unlicense — public domain

for t in bare show glass tile chasm-bits glyph bolt spot; do
  git clone https://github.com/isene/$t.git
  (cd $t && make)
done

Each make runs the same two-step build (nasm → ld). Total wall time on a modern laptop: under 3 seconds for the entire suite.

The CHasm tools are paired with optional Rust TUI configurators (crust-based) that make their config files easier to edit interactively:

All four use the same ~/.<tool>rc.tmp → .bak → publish atomic-save dance, so a kill mid-write can never blank a config; mv ~/.<tool>rc.bak ~/.<tool>rc always restores the previous good state.

These are the only CHasm-adjacent tools written in something other than asm; they exist because writing a TUI configurator in pure asm would defeat the whole point.

All six tools are usable today. tile + strip + the chasm-bits asmites form the daily-driver desktop. glyph is the newest — a pure-asm TTF rasterizer that already renders OpenType variable fonts (interpolating between weight masters via gvar deltas + IUP), with the eventual goal of replacing glass's X core bitmap fonts so the whole desktop renders TTF without dynamic linking. The next milestone is glyph's integration into glass; after that, tile's multi-monitor phase.

Unlicense — public domain. Take it, fork it, strip it for parts.