Run Claude Code on a Spare Mac: Self-Hosted AI Agents

A spare Apple Silicon Mac can serve as an always-on host for Claude Code, a terminal-based AI coding agent that reads codebases, edits files, runs tests, and performs refactoring while relying on cloud model APIs rather than local GPU inference. Even an 8GB Mac Mini can handle cloud-routed usage, while Mac Studio systems with 32GB or 64GB memory are suggested for running local open-source models such as 27B- or 70B-parameter models through tools like Ollama or llama.cpp. The proposed setup installs Claude Code through npm, routes its Anthropic-compatible requests through Eden AI’s gateway using environment variables, and uses a launchd configuration to start the agent automatically after boot. Routing through a multi-provider gateway is presented as a way to reduce vendor dependence, enable automatic fallback during outages, and use pay-per-use pricing estimated at $30 to $80 monthly for five hours of daily AI-assisted coding, although actual costs vary by usage. Fully local operation is also possible through a proxy that translates Claude Code’s expected Anthropic API format for open-source models, but it requires more capable hardware and does not work directly without such translation.

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