10 GB VM for a chatbot: What the hell is Claude doing on your Mac

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 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 cl