# mit-pdos/biscuit

Biscuit research OS

Repository: https://github.com/mit-pdos/biscuit
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/biscuit
Language: Go
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2022-10-28T14:51:16+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2898, "days_push": 1405, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2575, forks 187 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:02.154843+00:00)

## What it is
Biscuit is a research operating system kernel written in Go for x86-64 CPUs, implementing a monolithic POSIX-subset kernel with garbage collection. It was built by MIT PDOS to study the performance trade-offs of using a high-level, garbage-collected language for kernel implementation.

## Use cases
- study garbage collection overhead in an OS kernel
- learn how a monolithic kernel is implemented in Go
- research high-level language kernels for systems courses
- experiment with a journaled file system and TCP/IP stack in QEMU
- explore kernel threads, virtual memory, and drivers in a small codebase

## When to choose
- you are doing OS research on garbage-collected kernels
- you want a readable, small kernel codebase for teaching or study
- you need a POSIX-subset kernel that runs in QEMU for experiments

## When to avoid
- you need a production operating system
- you require full POSIX compliance or broad hardware support
- you want an actively developed kernel with regular releases

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: maintenance
- function: interpreter, programming-language, file-system, networking, concurrency
- domain: operating-systems, developer-tools
- platform: go, cpp
- tags: operating-system, kernel, garbage-collected, research-os, x86-64, qemu, monolithic-kernel, posix-subset, research, linux

## Member repositories
- mit-pdos/biscuit (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:02.154843+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:22:44.723380+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mit-pdos/biscuit (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:02.154843+00:00, sha 3c7369f5b40b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.