🌟 Nordstjernen: A Web Browser Built From Scratch#
Can you imagine building a web browser from scratch, in C, with full HTML and CSS support? That’s exactly what the Nordstjernen team did. They just released version 1.0.0.
🔍 What Makes It Special?#
🔒 Security by design: each tab runs in its own sandboxed process (no JIT), eliminating an entire class of vulnerabilities.
⚡ Lightweight and auditable: ~105,000 lines of C, small enough for a single person to read and audit end-to-end.
🤖 Built-in local AI: the start page includes an AI assistant running entirely on your machine via llama.cpp — no cloud, no telemetry.
🌐 Standards-compliant: compatibility is measured against the WHATWG HTML spec section by section, not against other browsers — 114 spec rows fully implemented.
🏗️ Cross-platform: Windows, Mac and Linux (Android port in progress).
💡 Explanation in a nutshell#
A web browser is the program you use to view pages on the internet. Most browsers (Chrome, Firefox) have tens of millions of lines of code. Nordstjernen was built from scratch with only ~105,000 lines of C — a very efficient language — making it easier to audit and potentially more secure. It also has a local AI: an assistant that runs on your computer without sending any data to the internet.
The license is unique: free to use and modify, but you cannot use it as a base to create a competing browser. After 10 years, the code becomes MIT (fully free).
More information at the link 👇
