Claude Code Rust TUI sidesteps V8 heap OOM crashes

Claude Code Rust is a native Rust terminal UI (TUI) reimplementation of Anthropic's Claude Code CLI, posted to Hacker News by contributor char8. The project was motivated by a well-documented pain point in the original tool: JavaScript heap out-of-memory (OOM) crashes during long coding sessions, tracked in issue `anthropics/claude-code#1421` with over 65 comments from affected users. Because the upstream Claude Code is built on Node.js and runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, extended sessions can exhaust the V8 heap — a limitation that char8 describes as a recurring blocker severe enough to prompt a full language-level rewrite.

The Rust port sidesteps the problem entirely by having no V8 heap at all.

The Rust port sidesteps the problem entirely by having no V8 heap at all. As a compiled, memory-efficient language, Rust manages memory without a garbage-collected JavaScript runtime, so the specific OOM failure mode cannot occur by design. char8 reports having switched to the Rust version as their daily driver, suggesting it is functional enough for real-world use. The project is hosted at `github.com/srothgan/claude-code-rust`.

Key facts

1. 01Claude Code Rust is a Rust reimplementation of Anthropic's Claude Code CLI, presented as a native TUI.
2. 02The project was shared on Hacker News by contributor char8, published 2026-04-19.
3. 03The primary motivation is avoiding JavaScript heap OOM crashes that occur in long sessions with the upstream Claude Code.
4. 04The upstream crash is tracked in issue `anthropics/claude-code#1421`, which has 65+ comments.
5. 05Because the Rust port has no V8 heap, the OOM failure mode is structurally eliminated.
6. 06char8 uses Claude Code Rust as their daily driver.
7. 07The project is hosted at github.com/srothgan/claude-code-rust.

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