Claude Desktop
Turn Claude Desktop on in the Connect app and restart it. Its model traffic then goes through your Anyray gateway.
A Claude Desktop policy from your MDM overrides anything set on the machine. Your IT team follows Managed devices instead.
What Connect sets up
| Piece | What it does |
|---|---|
| Model route | Chat, Code, and Home requests go through your gateway, billed to your Claude subscription or your organization's Anyray key |
anyray tools | Let Claude read back output Anyray trimmed (anyray_retrieve) and search earlier context and imported chats. Listed under Settings → Developer |
anyray-connectors | One entry that carries your organization's connectors |
| Skills | The anyray skill and your organization's skills and guidance, installed from Anyray's anyray-org-skills plugin marketplace |
| Your organization's Desktop policy | What your admin set in the console's Claude Desktop policy: the model list, workspace and tool restrictions, egress, surfaces, and the built-in GitHub, Microsoft 365 and Web search connectors. A setting you changed yourself is kept |
| Hooks | The Code tab runs the Claude Code hooks Connect installs. Chat and Home have none |
Connect it
Open the Anyray Connect app, go to Tools, and switch on Claude desktop. If your admin already turned it on, the switch is on and locked.
Click Restart on the row, or fully quit Claude Desktop (⌘Q on macOS) and reopen it. Claude Desktop reads the setup only at launch.
Claude Desktop now runs in a separate profile, so its lists start empty. Start one Code session, open Home, then fully quit. While the app is closed, Connect copies your local sessions, MCP servers, plugins, and skills from the old profile. Reopen it.
The Claude desktop row in Connect's Tools tab reads Working once Claude Desktop has
sent a request through the gateway. anyray-connect doctor shows the same row.
Which plan pays
On the subscription lane, requests bill your own Claude plan. Connect mints a seat token once
with claude setup-token (one browser approval). Windows needs Claude Code installed; on macOS
the copy inside Claude Desktop is enough. Otherwise requests bill your organization's Anyray
key. Billing lanes.
If Claude Desktop says your organization has disabled Claude subscription access, click Approve on its row in the Connect app (what it does).
The model picker can default to a pricier model
Claude Desktop picks its own default model unless your admin sets a model list in the console's Claude Desktop policy. On macOS, Connect applies that list on its next policy sync, then Claude Desktop shows it at its next launch. A list you set in Claude Desktop yourself is left alone (how the list works).
Set it up from a terminal
Without the desktop app, run anyray-connect --with-tools claude-desktop (your other tools
plus Desktop) or anyray-connect --tools claude-desktop (Desktop only). An enrollment link
turns Desktop on only when your admin ticked it under
Users → Add User → Add users with CLI tool. If Claude Desktop is open, Connect finishes the
setup the next time you quit it.
While Claude Desktop is connected, the claude.ai admin console stops delivering connectors, plugins, skills, and model policy to it. Claude Code is unaffected, and Undo brings them back. What changes.
Bring your claude.ai chats
Local data copies by itself in step 3. Chats from claude.ai need your export:
Settings → Privacy → Export data. Anthropic emails a link. Keep the .zip. If the link lists
several, your chats are in conversations-000.zip. On a Team or
Enterprise plan, an Owner has to turn on member exports first, and the Primary Owner's export
works differently (details).
A running app writes its list back on exit and undoes the restore.
anyray-connect migrate --export ~/Downloads/conversations-000.zip
It needs a Claude Code CLI on the machine. Running it again adds only what is missing.
Your chats are under Home, not Chat. From a single .zip, each artifact is a file inside
the chat it came from, not on the Artifacts page, and your claude.ai Projects are in the
sidebar. From a split export, only the chats come back for now.
To share a restored artifact, or a new HTML, Markdown, SVG or React file, ask Claude to share it. Claude replies with a link in your Anyray console that only you can open until you ask it to share with your org, named people, or teams. This needs your admin to turn on Artifacts. To see pages colleagues shared with you, ask Claude.
The same export makes your old chats searchable from any connected tool, with no Claude Code CLI
needed. Unzip it, then run
anyray-connect history import ~/Downloads/conversations-000/conversations.json
(more).
Undo
Switch Claude desktop off in the Connect app, or run anyray-connect desktop disconnect, then
restart Claude Desktop. It reopens on your original profile (choose the Anthropic sign-in if asked), and your
claude.ai org settings come back.
Sessions, Home tasks, and restored chats from while Claude Desktop was connected do not show in the
original profile. Turn Claude Desktop back on to see them. Claude Code transcripts stay in
~/.claude/projects either way.