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Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

ykdojo.github.io

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Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#2

Post by addajones »

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.

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#4

Post by hahajk »

addajones wrote: post #2

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.

Dispatch/Cowork is basically claude code in a container. The section "Why not run it in a container?" would address your question in the post. One example I run into is that Cowork won't download and fill out or read pdfs or other files due to container permissions. Vanilla claude code has no problem using curl and wget.

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#6

Post by rootsudo »

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..

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#7

Post by trollbridge »

rootsudo wrote: post #6

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..

I am sorry to report that 16GB+ MacBook Airs/MacBooks have become unreasonably expensive - probably from use cases like this.

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#8

Post by deadbabe »

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.

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#9

Post by lizardking »

rootsudo wrote: post #6

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..

My setup is sort of reversed. The powerful machine (framework desktop) is my headless AI machine and M1 mbp is my daily driver. Works well!

Re: Setting up your spare Mac for Claude Code to control, a step-by-step guide

#10

Post by leokennis »

deadbabe wrote: post #8

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.

Exact same question as you. When the new ChatGPT app dropped it suggested to me to set up a task something like (paraphrased) “every Monday read my Gmail and Slack an make a summary and task list for the week”.

Why would I need an LLM to do this for me? That’s 5 minutes of work max, and doing it gets me in the flow of work again, to see what’s going on and needs to be done.

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