Claude Code

What it is

Claude Code is the agentic coding product. You point it at a codebase, describe what you want, and Claude works on it — reading files, running commands, editing, committing, opening pull requests. The same engine powers every surface, and your repo’s CLAUDE.md files, settings, and MCP servers work across all of them.

The three surfaces this site documents:

Desktop — a GUI inside the Claude app. Each conversation is a session with its own chat history and project folder; the sidebar lists them and you can run several in parallel.
CLI — claude in any terminal. The original surface, fastest for power users, and where every option is exposed.
Web — claude.ai/code. Cloud-run sessions against connected GitHub repos that persist after you close the tab.

Pick the surface that fits where you’re working. Sessions, models, skills, and connectors carry across.

Where to find it

On desktop

The Claude app’s title bar carries a two-position Mode toggle: Claude and Code. Switch to Code.
Code mode has its own sidebar — New, Artifacts, Customize, and a More menu — rather than the Projects / Scheduled / Dispatch rows you see in Claude.
The desktop app includes Claude Code, so there’s no separate CLI install needed for it.
CLI — install Claude Code, then run claude in any project directory.

On the web

claude.ai/code. It’s in research preview for Pro, Max, and Team users, and for Enterprise users with premium seats or Chat + Claude Code seats.
The page opens straight onto a Prompt box. Above it sit the environment pill — Default on a fresh account — and an Add repository picker; below it, the permission-mode control, a model selector, and an effort control.

How to use it

Pick your surface

Working locally, want to see diffs visually? Use the desktop app — switch the Mode toggle to Code and start a session.
Living in the terminal? cd into a repo and run claude. See Claude Code (CLI).
Long-running task, or a repo you don’t have locally? Start it at claude.ai/code; it keeps running with your laptop closed.

Move work between them

claude --cloud "…" starts a cloud session from your terminal; claude --teleport pulls a cloud session back down into it.
/desktop continues your current terminal session in the desktop app, where you can review diffs visually. Both handoffs need a claude.ai subscription.

Good to know

Auto is now the starting permission mode. On Pro, Max, and Team plans a new session begins in auto mode, where a second model — a classifier — reviews each tool call for risky actions and prompt injection, runs the ones it judges lower-risk, and blocks the rest, instead of asking you. The mode that reviews every action yourself is called Manual. You can change a running session’s mode at any time: Shift+Tab in the CLI, the mode indicator in VS Code, the mode selector on desktop and the web.
Same engine, different trade-offs. Anything you can do in the CLI you can broadly do in the GUI; the web surface trades local filesystem access for cloud persistence and triggers.
There are IDE surfaces too. Anthropic ships a VS Code extension (which also installs in Cursor) and a JetBrains plugin for IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm and the rest. This site doesn’t document them; see code.claude.com for setup.
Connectors and skills cross over. Customize → Connectors and your installed skills are available wherever you start a session.
Routines are saved Claude Code configurations that run on a schedule, on an API call, or on a GitHub event. You can create one from the web, from the desktop app’s Code mode, or with /schedule in the CLI — all three write to the same account. See Scheduled tasks.
Third-party providers (Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud Vertex AI, and similar) are supported on the Terminal CLI, VS Code, and JetBrains surfaces. Cloud sessions are not: they need an Anthropic account.

What’s changed recently

2026-09-13 — Auto is now Claude Code’s default permission mode. Anthropic’s permission-modes documentation makes auto the built-in starting mode on Pro, Max, and Team: a classifier model screens each tool call for risky actions and prompt injection rather than prompting you. The mode that reviews everything yourself is now labelled Manual.
2026-09-13 — The Code tab is no longer a tab. The desktop app’s title bar now carries a two-position Mode toggle — Chat and Cowork / Code — rather than three top-level tabs, and Code mode has its own trimmed sidebar (New, Artifacts, Customize, More). Also refreshed from the docs: --cloud replaces --remote for starting a cloud session from the terminal, /desktop hands a terminal session to the desktop app, and routines can now be created from the desktop app as well as the web and CLI. Anthropic also documents VS Code and JetBrains as first-class Claude Code surfaces, which we hadn’t mentioned.