Six places Claude Code can run. Three commands that move work between them. One pricing trap that quietly bills you. Here's the whole map — and the moves you'll actually use.
Stop thinking "local vs. online" as a binary. Think of it as six surfaces where a session can live, connected by three primitives that carry a session from one to another. Learn the six, then learn the three, and every workflow in this lesson is just a path through the map.
The claude terminal. Your filesystem, your env, your MCP servers. The origin of most sessions.
VS Code / JetBrains. Same engine as the CLI, wrapped in your editor.
The only surface that can push a running session up to the cloud, via "Continue in".
A fresh Anthropic-managed VM. Clones your repo from GitHub. Runs in parallel while your laptop is free.
iOS + Android Code tab. Triage, steer, approve, open a PR from your phone.
Unattended runs on a schedule, a webhook, or a PR event — no human at the keyboard.
--remoteSpins up a fresh cloud VM and hands it a task. The work leaves your machine entirely.
--teleportPulls a cloud session back into your terminal to finish it interactively.
/remote-controlKeeps execution local but mirrors the live session onto your phone or browser through a relay.
Pick where your work is and where you want it to go. The exact mechanic appears below — including the prerequisite that bites people.
Choose a "from" and a "to" to see the move.
"Run it for me" has four different answers in Claude Code, and people pick the wrong one constantly. Two questions settle it.
Pick one from each row.
Claude Code checks credentials in a fixed priority order. The trap: a forgotten ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in your shell profile silently bills you per token even with an active Max subscription. Toggle what's present in your environment and watch which one actually wins.
Priority (top wins): cloud-provider creds → ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN → ANTHROPIC_API_KEY → apiKeyHelper → CLAUDE_CODE_OAUTH_TOKEN → /login subscription
The reliable habit: run /status after changing environments — it's the only way to see which route is truly active. To force the subscription route, unset ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.
Enterprise routing is its own kind of "local ⇄ cloud": the agent stays in your terminal, but the model calls get routed to your cloud of record. One env var flips each backend.
CLAUDE_CODE_USE_BEDROCK=1 + AWS creds. Wizard: /setup-bedrock. If you hit beta-header 400s, set CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_EXPERIMENTAL_BETAS=1.
CLAUDE_CODE_USE_VERTEX=1 + ADC login. Wizard: /setup-vertex. Watch quota (429 RESOURCE_EXHAUSTED) and VPC-SC blocking web search.
CLAUDE_CODE_USE_FOUNDRY=1 + resource name or base URL (mutually exclusive). No wizard — env vars only.
ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL + ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN. Gateway must speak the Messages API and forward anthropic-beta / anthropic-version headers.
claude CLI speaks only the Anthropic Messages API, so pointing it straight at Ollama fails — open-weight backends (Qwen, DeepSeek, Llama) need a translation proxy (Claude Code Router, LiteLLM), and tool-use parity is incomplete. Treat it as advanced/optional, not a starting point.Four questions. Click an answer; the reasoning reveals itself.
claude --remote "…" — needs a GitHub-connected repo; push your commits first.
claude --teleport — needs clean Git state in the right checkout.
/remote-control + Claude mobile app — your laptop must stay on.
Cloud Routine — runs with no permission prompts, so write a self-contained prompt.
The fifth move is routing the model through Bedrock / Vertex / Foundry / a gateway — set the env var, then /status to confirm who's paying.