i wonder if they are running the proxy for external network connections in the VM.

I do use Claude Cowork and hence the VM is important, but I also leave the desktop app running all the time since I have many scheduled tasks at different times. The thing is that the VM could shutdown after being idle for some amount of time and then fire back up when you are ready to use it.

Anthropic has pretty consistently been shitty about how they roll out their software. Extreme lack of engineering rigor and thoughtfulness.

The answer is probably as simple as "no one thought not to do that."

---

I know different people work on these things so I can't do more than guess about how engineering culture cuts across teams, but given the sheer amount of carelessness and sloppiness in Anthropic's software I have to imagine they're burning investor money in training and inference because the code to do it is as bad as the rest of their software.

> Why are the UIs of the AI companies all broken in multiple ways?

Because they're vibe-coded ultra sloppy code. And it really shows.

They are moving at breakneck speed deploying on scales most of us can't even imagine. They are working in a space that's completely unexplored where getting information as quickly as possible is preferred above iterating on some feature until it's "done" while your competitor has released fifteen other features, all sucky, but one of which turns out to be a killer and makes a billion bucks overnight.

They're some of the only new UIs to be made in the last decade. Almost everyone else stays in the browser (or something close like electron- claude code is actually mostly written in React, they couldn't get far from web dev). The problem is they need to interact with the local filesystem, and not many people have built apps for such a wide range of devices in a long time, and of that small talent pool I bet most are corpo coders- moving too slow and to focused on "the right way" to actually ship more than detailed Jira tickets. They also don't have time for stable releases because competition is so fierce.

But I almost always think of things from a talent-pool-first perspective. Perhaps there are actual technical issues like what Boris was referring to.

There are lots of good answers in this thread but I think it's because they are AI companies and not UI companies. When you look at tools like AnythingLLM, OpenCode, pi, etc. you see all kinds of different interfaces, and while they might make disagreeable choices at least they do it with intentionality and direction.

  > Why would I build my little web-apps and backends in the cloud when I can run things faster locally?

Because the company that designed and built your Chromebook made that the easy path.

> Why would I build my little web-apps and backends in the cloud when I can run things faster locally?

Because in a lot of companies, your machine is actually just a portal to a remote desktop.

as AI native developer I need VS code forks for AI to be pre-installed. Also every single command or work need to be vetted by AI by default. I am going hardcore now.

ChromeOS is a perfectly usable developer OS. In many ways, Crostini makes it easier than developing on macOS.

"What do you mean, an Aluminum Falcon?!"

> why Google which has both Gemini and Android can't figure this out,

Not the first time an incumbent has four aces in hand and appears to be entirely unable to make anything of it.

> and if there are lessons to draw from that

Lesson 1: doing shit is hard

Lesson 2: money rules so milking the cow wins over taking the slightest risk

They vibecoded it, and admitted as much. Once it was able to self-vibecode, that's all they did. That's why it's written in React and uses gigabytes of RAM as a chat client.

It is surprising that the Claude web app lags pretty easily when using either chromium or firefox on ubuntu linux. Chats that delay my laptop work without issues on my ipad or iphone using the app.

The web app is definitely a bit of a problem. IF there is a native app on desktop or if claude cli is much faster, i haven't tried them.