AI Guides › Step-by-step guides
By Nigel Guy · 6 min read
Most people open Claude in one place, a browser tab or the phone app, and stay there for everything. It feels fine because chat answers questions. It starts failing the moment the job is "work on these files", "check that site" or "carry on while I'm out", because you end up copying and pasting between a chat window and the thing you actually need touched.
Claude now runs on several surfaces, and some of them hand work to each other. The skill is not learning all of them. It is knowing which one the job belongs on.
The rule: pick the surface by where the work lives (your files, a website, a repo, or nowhere yet), then move the session if your location changes, rather than starting again.
You need a Claude account. Chat works on the Free plan. Everything beyond chat in this guide needs a paid plan.
Cost at time of writing, from Anthropic's pricing page: Pro is $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually (about £15 a month, or about £13 on annual, at time of writing). Max starts from $100 a month (about £75 at time of writing). Team seats start at $20 a seat a month on annual billing. Check the £ price at checkout, because exchange rates and VAT move it. Pro is enough to try every surface below, but heavy agentic work uses your allowance quickly, so watch your usage.
| Surface | What it is | Work lives in | Plan needed (time of writing) | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat (web, desktop, mobile) | Conversation, search, file creation | The conversation | Free and up | Doesn't touch your local files |
| Cowork | Claude's agentic mode for knowledge work: plans, splits subtasks, delivers finished files | Your folders and connectors | Paid plans; Enterprise needs admin enablement | Desktop is the full version; web and mobile are beta |
| Claude Code | Coding agent that reads a repo, edits files, runs commands | A codebase | Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise, or an Anthropic Console account | Terminal-first, steeper to start |
| Claude Code on the web | Same engine running in the cloud at claude.ai/code | A repo, remotely | Subscription | Not your local machine |
| Claude in Chrome | Browser extension that clicks and reads sites | A live web page | Paid plans | Chrome only; real risk on sites you don't trust |
| Remote Control and Dispatch | Not a new place to work: a window onto a session running elsewhere | Your computer | Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise (Team and Enterprise need an Owner to enable it) | Your computer must stay on |
The desktop app has Chat, Cowork and Code tabs, so three of these live in one install. Anthropic's pages describe Cowork as now built into Claude itself on web and mobile, so what you see may differ from this table. Treat it as a map, not a screenshot.
Ask one question: where would a human assistant have to sit to do this?
Chat needs nothing. For the desktop app, download it from Anthropic's official download page, sign in, then choose the Cowork or Code tab. The app includes Claude Code, so you do not need the terminal install for that tab.
For the terminal, Anthropic's documented native install on macOS, Linux or WSL is:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
On Windows PowerShell it is irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex. Open a new terminal and run claude --version to confirm it worked, then cd into a project and run claude. For Chrome, open Chrome, find Claude in the Chrome Web Store, choose Add to Chrome, sign in and pin it. Other Chromium browsers and mobile aren't supported.
This is the part most people miss. Per Anthropic's Claude Code documentation:
/remote-control (or /rc), or start with claude --remote-control. The session then appears at claude.ai/code and in the Claude mobile app. It still runs on your machine; the phone is a window onto it.claude --teleport./desktop continues your terminal session in the desktop app for visual diff review (macOS and x64 Windows).One dated change: Anthropic's support page says that from 6 October 2026, new Cowork tasks on Pro and Max move to cloud infrastructure, existing local tasks stay on-device, and the "Only on your computer" setting is removed. Read that page before you assume a task stays local.
Run one real job per surface for a week and note which you reached for. If you can say, for each, "this lives there because the files or site are there", you are using the table. Start a Remote Control session, open it on your phone, send one message, and confirm it shows in the terminal too.
/remote-control cover most of it.