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Forkbomb clones your repo into sandboxed forks in milliseconds and gives each one a different strategy. Your test suite judges every patch: the losers get kill -9, the survivor's patch is yours.
Recorded run 2026-10-05 · bench on MacBook Air (M2, 24 GB) · 64 automated tests in the CLI. The fork-tree animation is an illustration, not a recording.
01Recorded run · 2026-10-05
A real race: Claude Code on a Max plan, a demo calc repo with 10 of 14 tests failing. Fork 1.04 (rewriter) passed all 14 first, so the other 3 were killed.
| PID | PPID | CMD | FORK | TURNS | TESTS | STAT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | - | demo calc repo | - | - | 4/14 | parent |
| 1.01 | 1 | surgeon | 0.97 ms | 8 | - | R+ runningSIGKILL |
| 1.02 | 1 | root-cause | 1.46 ms | 8 | - | R+ runningSIGKILL |
| 1.03 | 1 | test-driven | 1.05 ms | 6 | - | R+ runningSIGKILL |
| 1.04 | 1 | rewriter | 1.03 ms | 9 | …14/14 | R+ runningexit 0 |
node dist/cli.js run ./calc --task "fix the failing tests" --test "node --test" --forks 4run · 4 forks × 2 rounds · claude-code · race · sandbox onbaseline: 4 passing, 10 failingfork() 4 copies of pid 1 in 1.13 ms each via apfs-clonefile 1.01 surgeon 1.02 root-cause 1.03 test-driven 1.04 rewriter 1.04 ✎ create calc.js · $ node --test 1.04 PASS 14/14 · 94 lines kill -9 1.01 1.02 1.03 (1.04 passed first)exit 0 1.04: 94 lines in 1 file. All 14 tests pass. 38.7s
Replay, straight from the run's own event log. Every fork has resolved by 38.5 s.
02How a detonation works
One loop, drawn from the run above. Every step is plain mechanics you can read in the source.
clonefile(2)Your repo is snapshotted once as pid 1, then cloned into N forks. Blocks are shared until a fork writes, so a fork costs metadata, not a copy.
--forks NEach fork is a coding agent with its own strategy: surgeon, root-cause, test-driven, rewriter and more. Different approaches fail differently.
--test "npm test"When a fork stops, its diff minus any test edits goes onto a fresh clone, and your test command runs there.
kill -9Race mode: the first fork to pass wins and the rest are killed mid-run. Best mode lets all finish and keeps the smallest passing diff.
--applyThe survivor's patch is yours to read and apply. No pass? The best fork's verified state seeds the next round.
03$FORKBOMB utility
The token has one job: paying for hosted forks. Burn $FORKBOMB, get USD credit at the price when the burn lands, and spend it on Forkbomb's own GPU coding model. Self-hosting stays free.
forkbomb:<workspaceId>Solana--engine hostedliveSend one burn transaction from your wallet with the memo forkbomb:<workspaceId>. Burned tokens are gone for good.
The server reads the burn from Solana and credits your workspace in USD at the token's time-weighted price when the burn lands. A one-tick spike can't be timed.
Credit pays for hosted forks: our GPU coding model behind an OpenAI-compatible API that --engine hosted calls. Later: bigger models, more forks per race, warm GPUs.
Credit is used up, not held.
Ledger opens at launch.
$FORKBOMB isn't live yet. Every burn will be listed with its transaction and the credit it produced.
04Benchmark
On APFS, clonefile shares every data block with pid 1 until a fork writes. The bench command forks the same tree both ways and measures it.
MacBook Air (M2, 24 GB) · 80 MB node_modules tree, 4,400 files · 16 forks. Extra disk is free space before vs after, so other activity on the machine shows up as noise.
05Engines
Pick the engine per race. The judge always runs on your machine, under Forkbomb's own sandbox.
--engine claude-codeclaude auth login, onceForks count against your plan's limits: 8 forks use them about 8× as fast as one session.
--engine apiANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your environmentThe key stays in Forkbomb's own process. Fork shells get a clean environment without it.
--engine hostedThe code your forks read is sent to Forkbomb's hosted model. Credit opens when the coin launches.
Forkbomb is an independent open-source project. Not affiliated with Anthropic. Claude and Claude Code are Anthropic's products; you use them under your own account.
06Isolation
Each shell command a fork runs goes through macOS Seatbelt. It's a bomb, but a contained one.
.git is read-only.confined~/.ssh, ~/.aws, ~/.config/gh and Keychains are unreadable.deny--network opts in.denySeatbelt is a macOS sandbox, not a VM. Forks can still read most of your filesystem outside the credential folders. Run it on code you'd let an agent work on.
07FAQ
Straight answers. Something missing? Open an issue.
It pays for hosted compute. Burn it with the memo forkbomb:<workspaceId>, and your workspace gets USD credit at the token's time-weighted price when the burn lands. The credit runs forks on Forkbomb's own GPU coding model through --engine hosted. Every burn and the credit it produced is listed on the public burn ledger.
No. Forkbomb is MIT licensed and self-hosting is free: run it on your Claude plan or your own API key and never touch the coin. The token buys hosted convenience and scale, not permission.
The GPU pool is serving. Credit comes from burning $FORKBOMB, which opens when the coin launches. Until then the claude-code and api engines work with no token involved.
No. Credit is consumptive: no refunds, no transfers, no buybacks, no yield, no revenue share. Burn only what you plan to spend on compute.
Yes, for now. Forking uses APFS clonefile and the sandbox uses Seatbelt, both macOS. Other platforms would need their own fork and sandbox backends. None ship today.
Not yet. Clone the repo, run npm install and npm run build, then node dist/cli.js doctor to check the machine.
The judge drops test and test-config edits, applies the patch to a fresh clone, and doesn't count runs where tests went missing. It's designed against common gaming and still being hardened. Review the winning patch like any other change.
Forkbomb has no telemetry. On the claude-code and api engines, the code your forks read goes to Anthropic's API, as in any Claude Code session. On the hosted engine it goes to Forkbomb's hosted model. The judge always runs locally.
Point forkbomb at a failing suite. Watch the forks race. Keep the patch that exits 0.
MIT · macOS only · not on npm yet · not affiliated with Anthropic
# Clone and buildgit clone https://github.com/plvgger/forkbombcd forkbomb && npm install && npm run build # Check the machinenode dist/cli.js doctor # Run itnode dist/cli.js run ./my-repo \ --task "fix the failing tests" \ --test "npm test" --ui