The 10 GB surprise

You install Claude Desktop on your Mac. Everything's fine, the app is lightweight. But one day you check your disk and discover this:

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle

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10.8 GB.

Excuse me? Ten gigs for a chatbot? What's in there, the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Nope. Ubuntu.

The Claude product trinity

Before I explain the what , let me explain the why . Anthropic has three ways to give you access to Claude:

Product Where it runs For whom

claude.ai Anthropic servers Everyone

Claude Desktop + Cowork VM on your Mac Professionals

Claude Code Directly on your system Developers

The web version is the safe option: everything happens in Anthropic's cloud, nothing touches your machine.…