Letting long work run on its own

A normal session runs on your machine and stops when you shut the lid.

A cloud session runs on Anthropic-managed infrastructure instead, so it keeps going after you close the app or shut down the computer.

It’s built for the big jobs — a long run across many files, the kind of work you’d otherwise sit and watch while your battery drains.

Where you start a session, and the apps it shows up in, are covered in Orient-4 — this module is what happens once you send the long work to the cloud.

Start one by choosing where the work runs

The bar above where you type carries a setting for where the work happens.

Pick the cloud option, type the task, and I begin on the managed infrastructure rather than on your machine — and I stay running there whether your laptop is open, closed, or off.

Say:

"Run the full check and fix what breaks — do it as a cloud session so I can close my laptop."

A full check-and-fix across many files is the kind of long job to send to the cloud.

Watch it and steer it from anywhere

A cloud session is a named thing in your sidebar, sitting beside every other session, and it opens in a browser and on the phone — so you can glance at it between meetings.

You can open it mid-run and see exactly where it is, then send a new instruction the same way you would on your machine:

"Actually, leave the pricing file alone for now and keep going on the rest."

I take the new direction and carry on, still on the cloud.

Pull it back to your machine with its full history

If you’d rather take over by hand, the work doesn’t have to stay on the cloud.

I can move the running session onto your own machine with its full history intact — every step, every change, every decision so far travels with it — so you continue locally exactly where the cloud left off.

Say:

"Bring this session back to my machine so I can take it from here."

Reach for the cloud when the work is long; stay local for the everyday

Drafting an email, pulling a quick report, a short back-and-forth — those finish faster on your own machine, and most of your day is that.

Reach for the cloud on the long jobs you want to be free of: the full check-and-fix, the run across dozens of files, the thing you’d start before a meeting and read after.

One thing to expect: a few small in-app conveniences — like the shortcut that lets you point at a file by typing its name inline — work only in a local session, because they reach into your machine’s filesystem.

So if one is greyed out in a cloud session, that’s the reason — the long work runs fine without them.

The one thing to remember

A cloud session runs on managed infrastructure that stays awake after you close the lid, you watch and steer it from your phone, and you can pull it back to your machine with its full history whenever you want to take over.

Reach for it on the long jobs; stay local for the everyday.

Next: back to your track — or ask for any module by name

Sources

• Claude Code on the web reference (verify against the live doc): https://code.claude.com/docs/en/claude-code-on-the-web — cloud sessions run on Anthropic-managed infrastructure, persist after the browser or app closes, are monitorable from the Claude mobile app, can be started in the cloud and pulled back into the local terminal with full history; research-preview status and paid-plan availability.
• Claude Code desktop application reference (verify against the live doc): https://code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop — choosing local vs cloud at session start; cloud sessions continue after the app closes and are monitorable from the web or the Claude mobile app; the in-prompt file mention is local-only.