Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide
https://ykdojo.github.io/claude-controls-mac/Outside of the article's mentioned graphics development, there is no reason to isolate an agent using actual hardware. I threw together this script[0] using libvirt to give claude its own graphical desktop env to be able to do user acceptance testing with Chrome. It has full root and can do what ever. If it makes a mess, I can dump and reinstall in seconds.
0: https://gist.github.com/smith153/04b4068b5a2d7b234f1c3d5992d...
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{"deleted":true,"id":48962970,"parent":48959392,"time":1784412699,"type":"comment"}
I just cannot come up with a good AI-is-actually-24/7-helping-me-out use case.
Please help: I wánt to need this!
Many Claude Code power users don’t really use IDEs anymore, so the only purpose of them working from their laptop instead of a phone is because that is the normal way to do it.
Here is a real use case: you are are responsible for some alerting channel. You have datadog/ cloud logging/ github all connected. You see a bunch of alerts come through while you are out and about and you prompt CC to investigate - Claude triages and says “all of the sudden you are getting time outs from this bank API your company partners with, this started an hour ago. It’s happening on ~15% of requests”. So you ping the guy at your company who does vendor relationships and go back to your weekend.
This is a non hypothetical example. Obviously it would be better if your job had a real on call rotation and more robust alerting and you wouldn’t be getting slack alerts on the weekend… but I take the approach this job affords me a lot of nice flexibility so it’s ok
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I've used it for the following when I've had tokens to burn:
- Fuzzing with the goal for it to apply domain-specific and source-informed knowledge to choose specific fuzzing approaches.
- More generally, any optimization problem that benefits from domain-specific or source informed knowledge.
- Running Microsoft's SkillOpt [0].
Letting it control a browser and searching for a pair of pants of a given size and length and color and style.
Yes, surprisingly, this is something Google cannot do yet.
I run a lot of data science-type analyses that can take up to hours at a time to run, so Claude is « monitoring » tasks most of the time. I have it on remote-control so I get notified when a task is done or need clarification, but most importantly whenever I have a new idea, I can just ask Claude to queue it up. Most of the time my hardware is the bottleneck, not the subscription quotas.
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I changed all smart speakers to retrofitted old radios with an amp and a pi. The hot word detection runs on the pi itself but whisper and LLM/task orchestrations goes over my local server with a 4080.
They help folks on fixed rate plans consistently hit their usage limits which provides them the feeling of getting their money's worth.
i like using /remote-control to keep vibe dev running smoothly against my usage limits and deadlines
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It's less about 24/7. It's more about it can't work when your laptop is in your bag and in transit and there is something that you have set up and want to run.
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Do you do software development? Is there any work left at the end of the day? Have it do that stuff.
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Generating leads for new work, if you are a freelance. Automatically answering customer support emails, if you own a SaaS. Monitoring competitors' socials, websites, etc for new features you have to compete with. Monitoring updates on software you depend on for breaking change / deprecation announcements.
I think the main use case for AI bros is to setup a goofy looking dashboard, name it Jarvis to cosplay being Tony stark, and display stats for all the generated videos they're posting to social media.
(I wish I was joking)
{"deleted":true,"id":48960580,"parent":48960252,"time":1784398165,"type":"comment"}
ask AI to help
Same here
Though it doesn't get by all the hurdles mentioned, it is alternatively possible to run Mac OS in a VM on your Mac using UTM and install Claude Code within the UTM VM. UTM can be run under a non-admin Mac account. This can allow you to use most Mac-native tooling, at least. The interactive performance of using the Claude Code ui on the VM isn't great, however. I'm not sure if you can log into the VM via terminal on the host from the non-root admin account to avoid the ui performance issues.
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I currently have Claude Desktop installed on a separate Mac mini M4 and control it with Dispatch. Is there a reason to do this method, it still seems the way I have it setup it has full control over the local account I gave it on the Mac mini.
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I just redid my homelab/media server (switched from an old NUC I couldn’t figure out how to stop overheating even with some decent modification work, now using an hp elitedesk with an i5 processor that is handling my stack nicely). Thinking about setting up a vm on the base ubuntu install for isolation to run Claude in. May play with dispatch, may just put raw Claude code then use Moshi app on my iPhone and iPad.
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{"deleted":true,"id":48961374,"parent":48959392,"time":1784402752,"type":"comment"}
If I had one I would definitely try creating a separate VLAN for it to control, otherwise it's isolated from your files but still has access to your network and devices in it.
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I’ve been doing something similar with an old m2. It isn’t powerful enough for local models, well sufficient local models but for openclaw and Claude it’s been perfect.
MacBook m1/m2 also are cheap enough now vs an Mac mini which I was surprised about, not too surprised but yeah..
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Giving sudo permissions to an agent seems reckless. Claude gets his own unprivileged UNIX account, no more. I don't bother with containers or VMs however.
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Dispatch works great, and I have reversed the setup so Claude can ssh-spawn sessions on my homelab for non-Mac dependent work
Why a laptop at all?
Why not just use a VM in the cloud and just a CLI interface?
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I've been putting off learning Claude and this article had me strongly considering jumping in. Then I looked up Anthropic pricing and its 100x more convoluted than cloud services management. Its a goddamn full time job and independent skill set figuring out how to prevent going bankrupt from AI usage!
I think I'm gonna be a late adopter on this one until the industry figures out a less cumbersome pricing model.
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i just use terminus + wireguard + tmux and works great, i can control claude/codex from my phone while working out
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I still don't understand what these freaks are doing running these agents 24/7 on machines. What are they doing? Managing a todo list? You mean crossing items off as you complete them? Research tasks? To do what?
Never really get good answers. There is no killer app. Just bikeshedding.
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What's a good way to give a limited amount of money to the LLM, say like 2k or 5k or something. But keep it completely separate from my identity.
Like I want the LLM to have a bank account and he can do ANYTHING with that bank account that he wants. But he can't fuck anything up that has to so with me. He only has 2 - 5k
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