clode: Claude Code, everywhere

Claude Code ships as a binary-only distribution for a handful of popular platforms. clode re-bases it onto a small C runtime — txiki.js/QuickJS — and takes it everywhere else: macOS, musl-static Linux across eight architectures (x64 to s390x to loongarch64), NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonFly, OmniOS, Solaris — with more (Haiku, MidnightBSD, OpenIndiana, the BSDs on arm64) in the pipeline.

Two pieces:

• clode — the builder: one self-contained native binary per platform, needing no Node, no npm, nothing else on disk. The only thing we publish.
• quaude — the product it makes: the current Claude Code bundle, compiled to QuickJS bytecode and fused with a node-compatibility runtime into one native executable. Derived work: you fuse it locally, and it is never distributed.

Usage

Grab clode-<version>-<platform> from Releases, then:

./clode-0.1.2-netbsd-amd64 build   # fetch + extract + fuse -> ./quaude
./quaude                           # run it like `claude`

Every fuse self-verifies before reporting success: an offline canned Messages round-trip plus --quaude-attest manifest verification. clode build extracts from a Claude Code provider bundle — it finds an npm-installed one, or point CLODE_CLAUDE_BIN at it.

The classic mode still works: with Node >= 24 on PATH, clode launches the extracted bundle directly under your host Node, anywhere you'd run claude. clode fetch keeps it current, and a daily changelog watch warns when an upstream change threatens the hack (clode --clode-watch on demand; CLODE_NO_WATCH=1 off).

Either way you'll live without: image/sharp, audio capture, computer-use, SQLite-backed bits, MSAL, runtime TypeScript, and anything else from Bun.* that's stubbed or missing.

Beware

clode is a hilarious hack that will inevitably stop working. It attempts to be reasonably robust against many failure modes, but can't possibly defend against all of them.

If you've been wishing you could run Claude Code directly on your weird machine, use clode while you still can.

Installation

From Releases: download, chmod +x, done. SHA256SUMS covers the native builders; every binary carries a SLSA provenance attestation (gh attestation verify <file> --repo <owner/repo>).

For the classic Node-launcher mode instead:

• node >= 24 and npm (>= 20 suffices for clode build alone)
• ugrep >= 7.5.0, bfs >= 3.x (built with Oniguruma), and rg for fast searches

npm pack
sudo npm install -g ./clode-*.tgz

To remove:

sudo npm uninstall -g clode
rm -rf "${XDG_CACHE_HOME:-$HOME/.cache}/clode"
rm -rf "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}/clode"

Development

npm test               # offline suite (default; no network or login needed)
npm run test:online    # also the network/model tests (needs a logged-in ~/.claude)

The PTY/TUI tests drive clode under a pseudo-terminal; the harness self-installs into test/.harness/<platform-tag>/ on first run. On Linux that first run compiles node-pty from source (needs python3, make, a C++ compiler) and can sit quiet for a few minutes — it is not hung.

Building the pieces from source:

• node scripts/build-tjs.mjs — the pinned, patched txiki.js runtime (build/tjs/tjs). Pins in spike/quickjs/PINS.md; portability fixups apply themselves with content verification.
• clode build --self — fuse the native builder itself (embeds the esbuilt launcher from node scripts/build-sea.mjs --bundle-only and the pristine tjs template, so the result needs nothing on disk).
• node scripts/build-sea.mjs — the transitional single-file Node SEA (the -node-tagged release assets; Windows's only path today). Run it with an official, non-stripped Node >= 24 — the SEA embeds whichever node runs the script, and a stripped or non-system-lib node produces a broken or non-portable binary.