What they did
Kale Toh bought a second-hand M2 Mac mini with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for about $390 to sit in a storeroom and let Claude build projects while they were out. Running iOS simulators, Android emulators and DaVinci Resolve at once crashed everything. Rather than buy more RAM, they asked Claude to make the projects take turns. Together they built a queue where each heavy job costs units (iOS simulator 1, Android emulator 2, Resolve 2) and no more than 2 units run at a time; other projects wait. When the SSD fell to 13GB free, they added throwaway simulators that are created for one job and deleted with their cache afterwards, and moved working space onto a NAS.
How it went
The crashes stopped and free disk went from 13GB back to about 100GB. The author now works on iOS, Android and web apps and edits videos on the mini remotely from a phone through Claude remote control and a JetKVM box. Projects do ask whether they can jump the queue. The only limit still being hit is the Claude Max 5x weekly allowance.
Worth knowing
Claude had warned that 8GB was workable only if iOS and Android simulators never ran at the same time; the queue is the enforced version of that rule. Swap on an 8GB Mac lives on the SSD, so running out of disk brings the memory problem back. The post gives no code or exact build details.