Engineer builds a PinePhone OS from kernel up with Claude Code, 81 patches, full 66 FPS
Elian_D · reddit · 2026-11-11
An embedded engineer used Claude Code to build a complete firmware OS for the PinePhone from scratch: a single LVGL program drawing straight to the screen on Buildroot and a mainline kernel, covering calls, SMS, camera, maps, Telegram, Doom and more, with most screens at full 66 FPS. A WebAssembly build runs in the browser.
Key details:
- 81 patches (72 new): 46 to Linux (USB, cameras, charging, device tree, waking from deep sleep on calls) and 23 to LVGL (optimizing its OpenGL ES renderer on the Mali-400).
- Workflow: profile on device → hypothesis → patch → rebuild → flash → measure. The hard part was reading driver code and logs to find the one line to change — where a tireless agent helps most. Mostly Opus 5.5 at medium effort, with Fable 5.2 for deep problems like VoLTE debugging.
- Safety: A/B partition updates with automatic rollback, plus 1,892 headless UI tests on PC with faked peripherals, run under sanitizers; test-first rule catches confident-but-wrong fixes.
- Lessons: agent now screenshots after every tap after it overwrote save files; RAM overclocking hangs were made non-fatal by rollback.
- A long CLAUDE.md accumulates why each patch exists and modem quirks for new sessions.
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