I asked Claude Fable 5.1 to build an operating system from scratch, and then booted it from USB on a real laptop. It isn’t Linux with a new theme. It isn’t Windows. And yes, it runs DOOM.
Meet EMBER: an experimental operating system built with AI for an old Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro that had been collecting dust for years.
An early DOS-like build with a rough graphical interface was booting in about two hours. Turning that into something usable took a lot more work: scrambled screens, missing drivers, silent games, system freezes, and more reboots than I care to remember.
In this video, I take Ember from those first broken boots to DOOM with working audio, Alley Cat, Prince of Persia, a custom desktop, music playback, and a resource monitor. We even got the touchpad and touchscreen working—and added an on-screen keyboard so the Yoga could become an Ember tablet.
Then there was performance. Something as simple as dragging a window could bring the CPU to its knees. Fixing that changed the entire project.
On this laptop, booting from power-on to the command prompt takes about 17 seconds. Launching the Ember graphical desktop from there takes about 1.8 seconds.
This wasn’t a one-prompt miracle. Claude generated the code; I directed the design, tested the results on real hardware, and kept pushing until things worked.
The operating system itself was written from scratch. Games such as DOOM use existing game code and assets. Ember is still an experiment, not a finished replacement for your everyday OS.
Ember is available on GitHub: https://github.com/Made-In-Basement/ember
I’ve only tested it fully on Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro, and it has some minor bugs there.
Also booted it up on a Dell Inspiron 16 laptop using the newer Ember2.
GitHub has instructions, but feel free to ask for specifics in the comments.
What should I make Ember do next?
#ClaudeAI #OperatingSystem #RetroComputing
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