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

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

#71

Post by weard_beard »

iambenm wrote: post #57
weard_beard wrote: post #25

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.

Look at the subscriptions. That's how anyone using the stuff as an individual should be approaching it today if they are dealing directly with Anthropic or OpenAI. With the $200 Claude subscription I was able to get around $13-15k of API equivalent usage in one month (note: this was during the "+50% usage" promotion that they have kept extending since May). When you hit your usage limit for a given time period you ge…

What I’m reading is this use case is for 3-5 days a week full time dev if you stick to off hours US time. That you can save significantly if you have spiky usage 1-2 days a week by going the ad hoc API route if you’re new and you need to install a bunch of monitoring tools to tell you how best to save week to eeek as your usage patterns change and you risk surprise bills in the 10s of thousands if you get it wrong.

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

#72

Post by lionkor »

theptip wrote: post #69
lionkor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware this is likely sarcasm, but in case it isn't, what do you gain from doing side projects this way?

No sarcasm, I am completely serious. I don’t have time for much leisure coding these days. I do have time to kick off a few tasks in the morning to progress my many side projects. Nothing public / oss, just code that I find useful/interesting like home automation, content pipelines, games, etc. There are a bunch of cases where remote control from iOS onto a Mac Mini is simply nicer than using iOS Claude Code sandboxe…

Well I am fully of the opinion that LLMs can help in software programming, it's not something that I feel provides any value unless it has a human in the loop. The overhead of having to figure out if the agent did a good job, if the agent is actually done or not, and if the thing it built is shit or not, is worth simply avoiding by having a human in the loop.

So I wouldn't agree that the agent should be cranking out code all the time, in fact that seems more like a waste of resources compared to the work it creates. But I do understand home automation software can be very one-off and simple. But then again, a properly programmed home automation suite doesn't need a SOTA model to modify it, I think.

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

#73

Post by j45 »

catoc wrote: post #24

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!

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.

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

#75

Post by j45 »

TekMol wrote: post #65

Why a laptop at all? Why not just use a VM in the cloud and just a CLI interface?

This can work, but increasingly there is benefit from local, including places that want data to be secure and not in the cloud. This is a thing. It's normal. It's just new to people who haven't realized how common it is.

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

#76

Post by j45 »

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.

Claude dispatch does things differently than this. Dispatch is very convenient for somethings (including connectors).

But increasingly it seems like dispatch was slapped on top of cowork incrementally, when there was not an integrated and cohesive strategy across cowork between mobile/desktop/laptop. This is kind of what many of us get/got to learn in our 20's.

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

#79

Post by iambenm »

weard_beard wrote: post #71
iambenm wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the subscriptions. That's how anyone using the stuff as an individual should be approaching it today if they are dealing directly with Anthropic or OpenAI. With the $200 Claude subscription I was able to get around $13-15k of API equivalent usage in one month (note: this was during the "+50% usage" promotion that they have kept extending since May). When you hit your usage limit for a given time period you ge…

What I’m reading is this use case is for 3-5 days a week full time dev if you stick to off hours US time. That you can save significantly if you have spiky usage 1-2 days a week by going the ad hoc API route if you’re new and you need to install a bunch of monitoring tools to tell you how best to save week to eeek as your usage patterns change and you risk surprise bills in the 10s of thousands if you get it wrong.

The approach I took was to start with the $20 plan, then when it became clear it wasn't sufficient I upgraded to the $100 plan. The $20 plan didn't cover one night of coding. With the $100 plan I started bumping into the 5 hour usage limits after ramping up over a week or two.

My average API equivalent use is around $30-40/hr. I would just bite the bullet on a plan for one month, then use that to calibrate your expectations around usage and cost optimization. The plans are heavily subsidized.

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

#80

Post by weard_beard »

iambenm wrote: post #79
weard_beard wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m reading is this use case is for 3-5 days a week full time dev if you stick to off hours US time. That you can save significantly if you have spiky usage 1-2 days a week by going the ad hoc API route if you’re new and you need to install a bunch of monitoring tools to tell you how best to save week to eeek as your usage patterns change and you risk surprise bills in the 10s of thousands if you get it wrong.

The approach I took was to start with the $20 plan, then when it became clear it wasn't sufficient I upgraded to the $100 plan. The $20 plan didn't cover one night of coding. With the $100 plan I started bumping into the 5 hour usage limits after ramping up over a week or two. My average API equivalent use is around $30-40/hr. I would just bite the bullet on a plan for one month, then use that to calibrate your expec…

Thanks for the insight! Really wish they had easier cheaper ways to learn.
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