PsychoQuine

Self-Replicating ✦ 18 Languages ✦ Live Verification
Universal resource-agnostic Quine generator and verifier.

About ✦ Features ✦ Installation ✦ Usage ✦ Architecture ✦ Contributing

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About

PsychoQuine is an autonomous CLI and meta-programming engine for generating legitimate, mathematically sound quines across 18 canonical programming languages.

Quines are often treated as brittle one-offs or esoteric curiosities. PsychoQuine treats self-replication as a formal engineering discipline, providing exact reflexive generation, live child-process sandbox verification, payload injection, and runtime discovery.

Each generated program strictly satisfies Kleene's Second Recursion Theorem: it takes zero external input and outputs an exact copy of its own source code ($\text{execute}(Q) \equiv Q$), verified byte-for-byte via SHA-256 hashing.

Philosophy

"A quine that cannot self-verify is not a quine."

This is a Core Red Project, part of the Sxnnyside Project's experimental branch.

Features

• 18 Language Engines: Canonical quines for Python, JavaScript, C, C#, Rust, Bash, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Go, Lua, OCaml, Pascal, Scheme, Common Lisp, DOS Batch, Brainfuck, and HQ9+.
• Zero-Tolerance Verification: Sandboxed live execution testing ensuring 100% byte-for-byte identity against system runtimes.
• Resource & Payload Injection: Embed arbitrary text, external files, or ASCII banners into quines without breaking self-replication.
• Kleene Recursion Explainer: Mathematical breakdown and technical invariants inspector for any target language (explain).
• Host Runtime Doctor: Automatic PATH discovery identifying available compilers and interpreters on the host system.
• Safe Simulation: Dry-run mode (--dry-run) projecting byte size, expansion ratios, and SHA-256 hashes without compiling.
• Shell Autocompletion: Native completion script generation for Bash, Zsh, Fish, PowerShell, and Elvish.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Rust toolchain 1.85+ (cargo, rustc)

From Source

git clone https://github.com/core-red-project/psychoquine-cli.git
cd psychoquine-cli

cargo build --release

The compiled binary will be located at target/release/psychoquine.

Usage

# Generate and print a Python quine to stdout
psychoquine generate python

# Generate a Rust quine with payload and verify execution
psychoquine generate rust "Core Red Project" --verify

# Embed an external file into a C quine and save to disk
psychoquine generate c --payload-file ./data.txt -o quine.c

# Simulate generation without running compilers
psychoquine rust --dry-run

# Audit host system compilers and runtimes
psychoquine doctor

# Explain the Kleene recursion mechanics of a language
psychoquine explain python

# Generate shell completions (e.g. Zsh)
psychoquine completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_psychoquine

Architecture

psychoquine-cli/
├── src/
│   ├── domain/          # Pure entities: Quine, Language, Payload, VerificationReport
│   ├── engines/         # 18 canonical QuineEngine trait drivers
│   ├── application/     # Use cases: generate, verify, explain, doctor
│   ├── infrastructure/  # OS adapters: child sandbox, PATH detector, terminal
│   └── presentation/    # CLI layer: Clap v4 commands, view rendering
├── tests/               # End-to-end sandbox integration tests
└── Cargo.toml           # Standalone Rust crate configuration

For developer recipes and local tasks, see the task runner configuration in Justfile (just --list).

Contributing

Contributions are accepted. See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

Before contributing, read the Code of Conduct.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.

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PsychoQuine — Core Red Project
© 2026 Sxnnyside Project