Dev builds a Recursive Language Model engine from scratch to digest arXiv papers

malliktwts · x · 2026-08-31

Indie dev @malliktwts shared progress on an RLM (Recursive Language Model) engine built from scratch: instead of treating context as tokens in a window, an RLM treats it as an environment — the input is stored as a variable in a sandboxed REPL, and the model writes code to explore it and recursively call itself on sub-pieces.

A notable engineering pitfall: the RLM engine is synchronous and blocking, while a TUI runs a single-threaded event loop — running the engine there freezes the whole UI. The fix: push blocking work to a background thread and marshal events back via a queue (callfromthread). In the demo, RLM plus a thin fetch harness pulls a paper from an arXiv ID and digests/explains it, with solid output.

Related event: Dev Open-Sources Recursive Language Model Engine(2 posts)→

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