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 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode 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. But if you want Claude to do real things on your computer — create documents, execute code, move files — you need something more. That's where Cowork and Claude Code come in, two completely different philosophies.…