Claude Code for PowerPC

World's first: Claude Code running natively on Mac OS X Leopard (2007)

A full Claude Code-like CLI running on a Power Mac G5 (PowerPC 970, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard) with direct TLS 1.2 connections to the Anthropic API. No proxy. No relay. No modern machine in the middle.

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Power Mac G5 (Mac OS X 10.5)      │
│  claude_g5.js ─► node_ppc runtime  │
│  QuickJS ─► mbedTLS ─► TLS 1.2    │
└───────────────┬─────────────────────┘
                │ direct HTTPS (no proxy)
                ▼
        api.anthropic.com:443

What This Is

An agentic coding CLI — Claude reads files, writes code, executes shell commands, and searches the filesystem, all running natively on big-endian PowerPC hardware from 2003. The full tool execution loop works, not just chat.

Requirements

• node_ppc — custom QuickJS + mbedTLS runtime for PowerPC Mac OS X
• An Anthropic API key or OAuth credentials (~/.claude/.credentials.json)

Quick Start

# On the G5 (or any machine with node_ppc)
cd ~/node-ppc-scaffold
./node_ppc claude_g5.js

# Non-interactive mode
./node_ppc claude_g5.js -p "List the files in /etc"

# With explicit API key
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-... ./node_ppc claude_g5.js

Features

Tool Execution

Claude has full access to the local filesystem and shell:

• Read — Read files with line numbers
• Write — Create/overwrite files
• Edit — Surgical string replacement in files
• Bash — Execute shell commands
• Glob — Find files by pattern
• Grep — Search file contents

The tool loop runs up to 25 iterations per turn — Claude can chain tool calls just like the real Claude Code.

Slash Commands

Command	Description
/help	Show available commands
/clear	Clear conversation history
/cost	Show token usage and estimated cost
/status	System info and API connectivity test
/model	Switch model (/model haiku or /model sonnet)
/compact	Compress conversation history to save tokens
/history	Show conversation summary
/export	Export conversation to markdown file
/debug	Toggle debug output
/exit	Exit

Shortcuts

Syntax	Description
@filepath	Include file content in your message
!command	Run a shell command directly

Other Features

• ANSI-colored markdown rendering (headers, code blocks, bold, bullets)
• Per-message and session token/cost tracking
• Model switching between Haiku (fast) and Sonnet (smart)
• OAuth and API key authentication
• Conversation export to markdown

Files

File	Description
claude_g5.js	Full Claude Code CLI (972 lines) — the main event
claude_g5_demo.js	Minimal interactive REPL (no tools, ~90 lines)
claude_chat.js	Batch conversation logger (~110 lines)
CLAUDE_G5_ARCHITECTURE.md	Deep technical breakdown of the native TLS stack

Why This Is Hard

Mac OS X Leopard ships with OpenSSL 0.9.7, which only supports TLS 1.0. The Anthropic API requires TLS 1.2 minimum. For 18 years the answer has been "upgrade your OS" or "route through a proxy."

We compiled mbedTLS directly into the JavaScript runtime, bypassing the OS crypto stack entirely. mbedTLS is written in portable C with no architecture assumptions — it handles big-endian PowerPC correctly out of the box.

The TLS 1.2 handshake originates from the G5 itself:

claude_g5.js (JavaScript)
    │
    ▼
node_ppc (QuickJS engine)
    │
    ▼
node_ppc_https.c (HTTP/1.1 parser + connection pooling)
    │
    ▼
mbedTLS 2.28 (TLS 1.2 handshake, ECDHE + AES-GCM)
    │
    ▼
Darwin 9.8 kernel (BSD sockets, DNS)
    │
    ▼
api.anthropic.com:443

See CLAUDE_G5_ARCHITECTURE.md for the full technical breakdown.

QuickJS Compatibility Notes

The node_ppc runtime uses QuickJS, not V8. This means:

• fetch() is synchronous — blocks until full response (no streaming)
• var used throughout (consistent with the runtime's JS patterns)
• prompt() not available in all builds — uses bash read builtin via child_process.execSync
• No \u{XXXX} extended unicode escapes
• JSON.parse(response.text()) instead of response.json()

Hardware Tested

Machine	CPU	OS	Status
Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz	PowerPC 970	Leopard 10.5	Working
Power Mac G4 MDD	PowerPC 7455	Tiger 10.4	Supported
PowerBook G4	PowerPC 7447	Leopard 10.5	Supported

Related Projects

• node_ppc runtime — The runtime that makes this possible (QuickJS + mbedTLS for PowerPC)
• rust-ppc-tiger — Rust compiler for PowerPC Mac OS X
• ppc-compilers — Pre-built GCC 7/10 for PowerPC

License

MIT

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