MeLE PCG35 + TCL 98 — wall workstation

What's being built

A single fanless mini-PC sits behind a 98-inch TCL panel and runs Claude as its primary user. The keyboard and trackpad live on the coffee table. The intent is a permanent Claude surface that's always on, always signed in, and always ready — not a laptop you have to wake up every time.

Two access surfaces are planned. Today's build only delivers the first.

Splitting the build this way means Phase 1 is reversible, low-risk, and doesn't require any network or DNS decisions. Phase 2 introduces the Cloudflare tunnel surface and gets a separate build day once the network operator is ready.

Hardware

Phase 1 — today's build Building now

Seven steps, ~60 minutes start to finish. Each one is independently verifiable; if a later step fails the earlier ones are still useful.

1. Pre-flight ~10 min

   • Boot the MeLE; sign in with a local account named claude.
   • Run Windows Update once; reboot.
   • Note the LAN IP from ipconfig — that's the address that goes in the router's DHCP reservation table.

   Renaming the PC to ccmidmele

   1. Press Win on the keyboard. The Start menu opens.
   2. Type settings and press Enter. The Settings window opens.
   3. In the left sidebar, click System (it's near the top — the icon looks like a small monitor).
   4. At the top of the System page you'll see a card with the current PC name (something like DESKTOP-AB12C3D). Click the blue Rename link inside that card. (If you don't see Rename at the top, scroll all the way down to About, click it, then click Rename this PC on the right.)
   5. A small dialog opens. Type ccmidmele — lowercase, no spaces, no dashes.
   6. Click Next.
   7. Windows asks if you want to restart now or later. Click Restart now. The change isn't real until reboot.

   Verify after reboot:

   1. Press Win+R, type cmd, hit Enter.
   2. In the black window type hostname and press Enter.
   3. It should print ccmidmele. If it still shows the old name, the reboot didn't complete — try one more time.
   Why ccmidmele? "cc" = Cedar Creek (location), "mid" = MeLE's Mid series, "mele" = the brand. Lowercase, no separators, matches the URL path on this site (/computers/ccmidmele/). Future computers in the network use the same convention: <site><model><brand>.

2. Install Claude Desktop ~10 min

   • Browse to claude.ai/download — grab the Windows installer.
   • Install, launch, sign in.
   • Settings → Appearance → Dark mode, font size Large.
   • Pin to taskbar AND register as a startup app: Win+R → shell:startup → drop a Claude shortcut.

3. Install Claude Code (CLI) ~10 min

   • Install Node.js LTS from nodejs.org — defaults are fine.
   • Install Git for Windows from git-scm.com. Git Bash comes with it.
   • Open Git Bash and run:

   npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
   claude --version
   claude        # first launch does the OAuth login

   • Bump the Git Bash font size to ~20pt for the wall view: title-bar right-click → Properties → Font.

4. Copy .claude to the MeLE on a USB stick ~5 min

   Three actions. No zipping, no scripts, no dialogs.

   1. On your existing PC. Plug in a USB stick. Open File Explorer (Win+E), click in the address bar at the top, type %USERPROFILE%, press Enter. Drag the .claude folder onto your USB stick in the left sidebar. Wait for it to finish, then unplug.
   2. On the MeLE. Plug the USB stick in. Open File Explorer, type %USERPROFILE% in the address bar, press Enter. Drag .claude from the USB stick into this folder.
   3. Verify. Open Git Bash, type claude, press Enter. Your skills and memory should be there.
   Can't see .claude in step 1? It's hidden because it starts with a dot. In File Explorer, click View at the top → Show → Hidden items. Now it'll show up.

5. Edge kiosk fallback ~5 min

   • Drop a shortcut into shell:startup with this target:

   "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Edge\Application\msedge.exe" --app=https://claude.ai --start-fullscreen

   • Use this when Claude Desktop is acting up, or when a guest wants to use the wall in a clean session.

6. Cloudflare Tunnel — claude.wholetech.com Phase 2 — deferred

   Cloudflare Tunnel + ttyd + Cloudflare Access (Google SSO) goes here when the network operator is ready to do the Cloudflare migration. Until then, the MeLE is local-network only. The original tunnel architecture is preserved in the network's planning notes; nothing about Phase 1 forecloses it.

7. Auto-start services for the tunnel Phase 2 — deferred

   NSSM-wrapped ttyd and the cloudflared Windows service are part of Phase 2. Skipped today.

8. The 98-inch experience ~5 min

   • Claude Desktop maximized on the primary display.
   • A second virtual desktop (Win+Ctrl+D) running Edge as --app=https://claude.ai for quick web-mode access.
   • Wireless keyboard and trackpad on the coffee table. That's it. The wall is now a Claude surface.

9. Verify ~5 min

   • Reboot the MeLE.
   • Confirm Claude Desktop and the Edge kiosk both auto-launch.
   • Open Git Bash, type claude, hit Enter — the OAuth session should still be active.
   • Open a small test prompt to confirm round-trip works on the big screen at the planned font size.

Decisions baked into Phase 1

What this is not — explicit non-goals

• Not a public Claude API endpoint. There's no LiteLLM, no proxy, no key forwarding.
• Not exposed on the internet today. No port-forward, no DDNS, no tunnel.
• Not a kiosk lockout. The MeLE is a regular Windows machine; it just happens to auto-launch Claude.
• Not a replacement for the existing droplet workflow. The network's primary services keep running where they already run.
• Not yet integrated into the 6-leg backup map — that gets added once the device is on its DHCP reservation and reachable.

If something breaks at the wall

What ships when Phase 2 is greenlit

Same URL, same content slug. Phase 2 work happens in three additions:

1. The MeLE gets cloudflared installed as a Windows service, configured against a tunnel created for wholetech.com's Cloudflare zone.
2. ttyd exposes Claude Code as a browser-terminal on localhost:8080, fronted by basic auth.
3. Cloudflare Access wraps the public hostname with a Google-SSO gate scoped to specific email addresses.

None of that is in motion today. This page will be updated when it is.