Ok, Laurent, and SoulAsylum., I think I’ve gotten to a bottom on this….
- first point, I did install the full new Claude with its issues, and Norton does NOT get upset about it.
- …at first, nor just running the Claude app. But as SoulAsylum may outline, it very possibly could at any agent operations if you used those (all the I’ll run Excel for you, etc., etc.). I am not going to try that.
- I’ll go into details below, but the answer that recommends itself to me, is, at this point, don’t install or leave installed the Claude app from installer.
- Instead, run Claude on the web. This invokes no agents, and gives you full Claude llm services just as the app would.
- If you want to run Claude Code, just do the npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code method, and add any plugins required on your developer app. This way it’s independent, works fine, and I did check again to make sure just now.
Ok, so what exactly is going on? The following straight from the Claude horse’s mouth…
- If you were running a previous install of the Claude app, as I had been, it would have failed silently after 11 Feb.
- If you then or otherwise installed with the newer downloadable installer, two things would happen:
- it would insist you turn on Developer Mode on Windows, to allow the install at all. This is dangerous and not for most persons, as I’ll outline below
- If you did turn on Developer Mode, as I was willing to experiment, you’ll then be asked to go forward once you restart the installer.
- Here there is a hidden option which is very important: If you say NO, then you’ll get offered to install only the Claude App, without any of the CoWork or other Agent abilities.
- Given how broken all of this is, and that Anthropic has known about it, with full complaint prominent on Github Issues alone, which are being ignored, I would certainly not myself want any of the CoWork. A very experimental person who was willing to risk new kinds of malware, etc. on some experiment machine is able to try it.
- Given all about this installer mess, and that they haven’t fixed it for two months, removing the developer mode requirement and making Agent CoWork etc. a clear optional choice, I’d avoid this entirely as Claude itself recommended, just run the independetnt apps as above.
- if indeed tempted to tempt fate, I’d at least turn off developer mode again after installing. It looks like they have just been lazy about providing a better installer which doesn’t require this way of laying your computer open to rogue installers downloade on you by malware.
I’m just uninstalling all the mess, and will use Claude from the web. It works very well with all its deep capabilities and thoughtful approach there. These app developers appear to be a run fast, blast engagement, break things unfortunate operation in a company with many pots boiling, if seemingly the best intended.
p.s. If you run Claude on the web in Chrome, you can use the Chrrome three-dot menu Cast, Save, and Share, item Install page as app, and you’ll get a Desktop icon which will raise Claude like an app, in its own sized window. You may get an overlay of Chrome starting first, if it wasn’t already open; just close or hide that as you please, to see the Claude ‘app’..