Contest announcement - Build on BareMetal Cloud Sep 7-20

September 2, 2026 - Return Infinity

We built BareMetal OS - an exokernel with a sub-millisecond cold boot and hardware-level microVM isolation. We think it's small and fast enough to be genuinely interesting to build on. So we're running a 2-week challenge to find out what you can build.

The BareMetal kernel was developed to work around the inefficiencies of the Linux kernel. In an ideal world we would not be limited by RAM, budget, or latency constraints. But we are. So if we can run something truly useful in a BareMetal cloud instance, that's what we want to see.

Key Dates

Opens: Monday, Sept 7, 2026
Submissions close: Sunday, Sep 20, 2026, 11:59pm ET
Winners announced: Friday, Sep 24, 2026

Eligibility

Open to anyone with a Discord account and a BareMetal Cloud account. Sign up for free at baremetal.returninfinity.com. We will add $10 to every account that signs up and sends a request through our Discord channel.
Open to individuals or teams
Submit as projects as you see fit.

Ideas

Smallest Footprint: Ship something genuinely useful in the fewest bytes. Report image size, RAM ceiling, and a static footprint breakdown and show your work, not just the final number.
Weirdest Thing That Boots: No functional bar. If it's a unikernel on BareMetal and it's delightful, it's in.
Check out the Showcase on our website returninfinity.com for ideas of bots and agents built for Discord and Telegram.

Getting Started

Sign up for free at baremetal.returninfinity.com if you do not have an account already
Tag #Sep2026Contest on our Discord channel. We will add $10 to your account.

Building guidance

Every account on baremetal.returninfinity.com can spin up to 4 instances with up to 16 MiB each for RAM allocation
Project is to be written in C. Currently that's a platform limitation. Eventually this will extend to C++ and Rust, but that is work in progress.
Each instance can use 4 MiB to 16 MiB of RAM.
Send in your questions to #general Discord channel.
Use the QuickStart guide in our GitHub repo .

Submission guidance

Once done, post link to your public repo in the #Sep2026Submissions channel for review. Include a README.
Also submit a one-paragraph pitch, boot log, or demo video in the #Sep2026Submissions channel.

Ground rules

We are seeding a community. The golden rule applies.
Every sandbox you spin up can help us find where the platform breaks.

Judging

Panel comprises Varun, Ian (CTO and author of the BareMetal kernel) and a guest judge. Each project will be scored independently on:

Does it use the platform's constraints as the point, rather than something to work around?
Does it work? Ideas are great, but execution is what matters.
Is the write-up clear?

Prizes

Grand prize winner : $250 in credits on BareMetal Cloud ; a 1:1 call with the founders a shoutout on returninfinity.com
Runner-up : $100 in credits on BareMetal Cloud; shoutout on returninfinity.com