At first I thought you meant merely compiling everything by hand [(with make)], like LFS (and then thought LFS without following LFS... and then thought make life easy, start with just a kernel and busybox (or toybox)).

But yeah... that'd be the real kudos.

I've made a small start towards that, having written my own text editor. (And, I suppose, in a way, my own irc client, "diis".)

But that's a long way from writing my own kernel and userland and other advanced accoutrements.

Maybe instead of writing own kernel, could just fork one. ... Maybe Ironclad... or even Hurd.