Build a small all-in-one media server manager under a hard memory budget

Reddit user u/CoderLuii, who says he has more than ten years in software and security, runs a home media server with the usual set of six separate apps for finding and managing movies, shows, music and subtitles. He wanted one app with a streaming-service look instead, so he designed holyarrs and had Claude write the code, in Go. Before any code, he set limits on idle memory, start time and download size. He had Claude build the same 10,000-poster home page two ways and measured both, shipped it as a single program with no operating system image inside, and added tests that load a 12,800-item library and fail if idle memory passes 250 MB, plus one that kills the app mid-job and fails if it is not back within 2 seconds.

He reports a download of about 15 MB and idle memory of about 70 MB with 12,800 titles, against 110 to 140 MB each for some of the apps it replaces. One home page build was about three times lighter and drew in half the time, so he kept that one. The restart test passes in about half a second. He says Claude kept letting memory creep past the limit until the failing test existed. The app was not yet publicly released at the time of the post.

His main lesson is that the agent does not care about size unless a test makes it. A commenter pointed out that 250 MB leaves a lot of room above 70 MB for slow creep, and he agreed to check against the last release's number instead. He says he used Claude but does not name the tool or harness.