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THOX.ai Research · Technical report · v0.1.0 preprint · 2026-11-11

Preprint, not peer reviewed

ThoxOS RK: One Rust Core, Six Targets

A measured, provisioned kernel proof of concept with a reproducible virtual lab: one portable Rust core, five emulated machine classes and a hosted process, and a signed provisioning record bound to the image measurement.

Tommy Xaypanya

CTO and Co-Founder (corresponding author)

ORCID 0009-0000-4425-9565

THOX.ai Research, THOX.ai LLC · November 11, 2026 · Prepared with AI assistance; no AI system is an author

Preprint. No DOI has been assigned.

Abstract

A review of 39 THOX repositories found no kernel that boots on a THOX device and no device provisioning format. This report contributes that bottom layer as a proof of concept. One portable no_std Rust crate of 1,600 lines holds the whole boot policy: a SHA-256 measurement of the running image, an Ed25519-signed provisioning record of 168 bytes that binds a device identity and a deployment profile to that measurement, a lockdown state for every failure, and a capability check on each service call. Five bare-metal ports (x86-64 by the PVH protocol, 64-bit Arm, RISC-V in supervisor and machine mode, and a 32-bit Arm microcontroller) and one hosted process run that same crate. In a lab of 46 boots under the QEMU emulator, 46 matched the expected verdict: every valid record provisioned, and all 36 boots with a missing, altered, wrongly signed or mismatched record, a patched image or an unkeyed image ended in lockdown. The measurement each guest computes equals the one the host tool predicts, the images rebuild bit for bit on the lab host, and kernel text is 30.3 to 40.8 KiB. Nothing here ran on a THOX device or any physical board; there is no hardware root of trust, no user mode and no driver beyond a serial console.

46/46

lab boots matched their expected verdict across six targets

Emulated, measured

36/36

boots with missing, altered or mismatched provisioning ended in lockdown

Emulated, measured

6

targets run one shared core of 1,600 lines: five bare-metal, one hosted

Built and booted

41 KiB

largest kernel text among the five bare-metal images; smallest is 30.3 KiB

Host, measured

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Contents

  1. Executive summary
  2. 1. Introduction
  3. 2. What exists today: the cross-repository review
  4. 3. Background and related work
  5. 4. System and threat model
  6. 5. Design
  7. 6. Implementation
  8. 7. Evaluation
  9. 8. Discussion and limitations
  10. 9. Conclusion
  11. 10. Roadmap and decisions for the founders
  12. Appendix A: reproducibility
  13. Appendix B: console and wire reference
  14. Appendix C: authorship and disclosure
  15. References

Where the paper lives

Cite this paper

@techreport{thoxresearch2026thoxosrk010,
  author      = {{THOX.ai Research}},
  title       = {{ThoxOS} {RK}: One {Rust} Core, Six Targets. A Measured, Provisioned Kernel Proof of Concept with a Reproducible Virtual Lab},
  institution = {THOX.ai Research, THOX.ai LLC},
  year        = {2026},
  month       = nov,
  version     = {0.1.0},
  url         = {https://www.thox.ai/research/papers/thoxos-rk},
  note        = {Preprint, not peer reviewed. No DOI. Corresponding author: Tommy Xaypanya.}
}

Preprint, not peer reviewed; no DOI. Every result is from an emulator or a host process; no THOX device was run.

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