Developer ports mustache.js to Rust in 72 hours, achieving 30x faster template rendering
Software developer Gargee Bhattacharjee built jugaad-mustache, a Rust port of the popular mustache.js templating engine, during the Port Mortem 2026 hackathon (Track F). The resulting binary compiles to roughly 2MB and executes in 5ms, compared to mustache.js which requires a 45MB Node.js runtime and takes around 150ms to start. The project enforces 100% memory safety by forbidding unsafe code, and includes a custom truthiness evaluator to replicate JavaScript's implicit type-coercion behavior in Rust. A standout feature called Jugaad Mode — inspired by the Indian concept of frugal problem-solving — auto-repairs malformed templates instead of crashing. Behavioral equivalence with mustache.js was verified through an automated fuzzer that ran 30,567 test iterations and found zero output differences between the two engines.
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