Build Guide

How to build and run Claude Code from the recovered source.

Credit

The source recovery and build setup used in this guide is based on the work by Janlaywss/cloud-code, who extracted the original TypeScript source from the npm package's source map and created the build scaffolding (stubs, patches, build script). We followed their steps to get the source building and running locally.

Prerequisites

Tool	Version	Purpose
Node.js	v18+	Runtime
Bun	v1.3.11	Build tool (uses bun:bundle feature)
pnpm	v10+	Package manager

Quick Start

# 1. Install Bun
curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
# Restart your shell or run: exec /bin/zsh

# 2. Install pnpm (if needed)
npm install -g pnpm

# 3. Install dependencies
pnpm install --registry https://registry.npmjs.org

# 4. Build
bun run build.ts

# 5. Verify
bun dist/cli.js --version
# Expected: 2.1.88 (Claude Code)

Running

# Interactive mode
bun dist/cli.js

# Show help
bun dist/cli.js --help

# Dev mode (runs source directly, no build needed)
bun src/entrypoints/cli.tsx

You'll need an ANTHROPIC_API_KEY for actual usage:

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="sk-ant-..."
bun dist/cli.js

How the Build Works

The build uses Bun's bundler with a custom build.ts script that:

1. Bundles src/entrypoints/cli.tsx → dist/cli.js (ESM format, Node target)
2. Injects feature flags via a custom bun:bundle plugin that replaces feature() calls with compile-time booleans
3. Embeds text files — .md and .txt files are loaded as strings
4. Injects MACRO constants — version, build time, URLs
5. Adds shebang — #!/usr/bin/env node prepended, file made executable

Private Package Stubs

Internal Anthropic packages are replaced with functional stubs in stubs/:

Package	Stub Behavior
color-diff-napi	Disables native syntax highlighting
modifiers-napi	Returns empty modifier state
@ant/claude-for-chrome-mcp	Disables Chrome MCP
@anthropic-ai/mcpb	Minimal MCP bundle processor
@anthropic-ai/sandbox-runtime	Minimal sandbox interface

Commander Patch

A patch in patches/commander@14.0.3.patch allows multi-character short options (e.g., -d2e). Applied automatically by pnpm during install.

Notes

• This build runs independently from any globally installed Claude Code (claude command)
• Both share config at ~/.claude/ and API credentials
• The build output is dist/cli.js (~22MB ESM bundle with source maps)