Zeroserve: A zero-config web server you can script with eBPF
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Zeroserve is a zero-config HTTPS server that uses eBPF scripts for request handling instead of config files.
Zeroserve serves websites from a single tarball with TLS 1.3 and HTTP/2, using eBPF programs as configuration rather than declarative config languages. Scripts run in userspace sandboxed via async-ebpf, JIT-compiled to native code with preemption to prevent blocking requests. The server uses io_uring for all network and disk I/O in a single-threaded event loop. Benchmarks show zeroserve 17% faster than nginx on small static files (36,681 vs 31,226 req/s), comparable on large files (~780 MB/s), and 22% faster proxying small responses (26.5k vs 21.8k req/s). Scripts access helpers for request mutation, rate limiting, JSON, AWS SigV4, and OIDC login. The design trades the split configuration layer (directives plus bolted-on scripting) for one unified eBPF program controlling the entire request path.
What commenters are saying
The dominant concern is the article's AI-generated authorship, raising skepticism about benchmark validity and feature completeness without battle-testing. The author confirmed manual oversight and responsibility for AI assistance. Secondary discussion favors nginx's proven track record and questions whether code configuration beats declarative configs for most users. One commenter noted nginx remains impressive and suspects the configuration bet may be misplaced since people generally prefer built-in directives over writing C. A fork added Rust script support as an alternative to C. The thread includes skepticism that configuration-to-code translation would be straightforward and debate over whether special-purpose config languages eventually degrade to general programming anyway.