Claude Code on the web: what it is and what it is not

Three different wishes

Starting a cloud session

The terminal handoff

This is the part most people miss, and it is the reason the web surface is worth learning even if you live in a terminal. The two directions are not symmetrical.

# start a cloud session for the current repo
claude --cloud "Fix the flaky test in auth.spec.ts"

# three at once, each independent
claude --cloud "Update the API documentation"
claude --cloud "Refactor the logger to use structured output"

# check on them from the CLI
/tasks

# pull one down into this terminal
claude --teleport            # interactive picker
claude --teleport <session-id>

• --cloud clones from GitHub, not from your disk. Push first if you have local commits, or the VM starts from what the remote has.
• Teleport is one-way from the CLI. You can pull a cloud session down; you cannot push an existing terminal session up.
• Teleport gives the terminal its own copy. New work stays local and does not appear back in the cloud session. To keep steering from your phone afterwards, start /remote-control in the local session.
• --teleport is not --resume. Resume reopens a conversation from this machine local history; teleport pulls a cloud session and checks out its branch.

What a cloud session can and cannot reach

The bundle fallback, for repositories with no GitHub remote

When you run claude --cloud in a repository that is not connected to GitHub, the CLI bundles the repository and uploads it to the session instead of cloning. Force it with CCR_FORCE_BUNDLE=1 even when GitHub is connected.

• The bundle includes full history across all branches plus uncommitted changes to tracked files.
• Untracked files are not included. git add anything the session needs to see.
• The bundle must be under 100 MB. Larger repositories fall back to the current branch only, then to a single squashed snapshot, and fail only if that is still too big.
• A session created from a bundle cannot push back to a remote unless GitHub authentication is also configured.

Isolation, network, and what it costs

• Isolated VMs. Each session runs in its own Anthropic-managed virtual machine, separated from your machine and from other sessions. Organizations can route sessions to a self-hosted environment instead, where isolation becomes your deployment responsibility.
• Network access is limited by default and can be disabled, per cloud environment. Even with network access off, the session still talks to the Anthropic API, which is a path data can take out of the VM.
• Credentials stay outside the sandbox. In Anthropic-hosted environments, git credentials and signing keys are not inside the container with the agent; authentication goes through a proxy using scoped credentials.
• Billing. Cloud sessions share rate limits with all other Claude and Claude Code usage on your account, and running several in parallel consumes them proportionately. There is no separate compute charge for the VM.

One workflow deserves a mention because it is the strongest argument for the web surface. With the GitHub App installed, Claude can watch a pull request and respond automatically to CI failures and review comments, pushing a fix when one is clear and asking you when a comment is ambiguous. Turn it on from the CI status bar in a web session, or run /autofix-pr from your terminal while on the branch. If your repository has comment-triggered automation such as Atlantis or custom Actions on issue_comment, read that twice before enabling it: replies are posted with your GitHub account.

Driving a local session from a browser

If what you actually want is your own machine doing the work while you watch from a laptop in another room or a phone on a train, that is a different architecture and it has its own name.

claude --remote-control "api migration"

# or from inside a running session
/remote-control

The session keeps running on your machine, so your filesystem, your MCP servers, your tools and your project configuration stay available, and typing @ autocompletes paths from your local project. It makes outbound HTTPS requests only and opens no inbound ports. It needs a claude.ai login: API keys and setup-token credentials are refused. The transcript is stored on Anthropic servers while connected so the conversation stays in sync across devices.

Questions people ask

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