Every Way to Reach Claude Code Away From Your Terminal

There are six ways to make Claude Code do something when you are not sitting at the terminal, and they are easy to confuse because several share the same claude.ai interface. This is the whole family in one place, sorted by the only question that actually decides between them.

Narrow it down

Four questions, one recommendation, and an honest note about what you give up by taking it. If your answers turn out to be incompatible, which happens more often than you would think, it says so rather than picking something that cannot work.

The whole family

Method	What starts the work	Code runs on	Plans
Remote Control	You drive a running session from claude.ai or the app	Your machine	Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise
Dispatch	You message a task from the Claude mobile app	Your machine, via Desktop	Pro and Max only
Channels	An external event is pushed in: CI, a webhook, a chat message	Your machine	Pro, Max; Team and Enterprise need an admin toggle
Claude in Slack	Someone mentions @Claude in a channel	Anthropic cloud	Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise
Claude Code on the web	You start a task in the browser or with --cloud	Anthropic cloud	Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise premium
Scheduled tasks	A schedule you set	CLI, Desktop, or cloud	All

Note the plan column, because it contains the most counter-intuitive fact here. Dispatch is the only one restricted to individual plans. It is unavailable on Team and Enterprise, which is the exact inverse of how these restrictions usually run.

Decide in two questions

Will your machine be on and awake?

If no, your options collapse to two: Claude Code on the web, or a cloud scheduled task. Everything else drives a process on your own hardware and dies with it. Remote Control, Dispatch and channels all need the machine up, and Remote Control additionally times out after roughly ten minutes without network.

If yes, keep going.

Does the work need your actual files?

If it needs your local filesystem, your MCP servers, your uncommitted changes or your project config, then it has to run locally: Remote Control, Dispatch or channels. A cloud session clones from GitHub and cannot see anything you have not pushed, let alone reach a database on your laptop.

If it does not, the cloud options are less hassle. No machine to keep awake, no timeout, and the session survives you closing the lid.

Supervising against delegating

The three local options differ in who decides what happens, and that is the distinction people miss when they pick one.

• Remote Control is supervision. You open the session, you steer it, the phone is a window onto work already underway. Best when you want to watch and interject.
• Dispatch is delegation. You message a task and Dispatch decides how to handle it, spawning a Code session in Desktop when the work looks like development. Bug fixes, dependency updates and test runs typically route to Code; research and document work stay in Cowork. The session appears with a Dispatch badge and pushes you a notification when it finishes or needs approval.
• Channels are reaction. Nothing starts until something outside happens, and then the event lands in a session you already have open. A CI failure arrives where Claude still has your files loaded and remembers what you were debugging.

They compose. Start work through Dispatch, then attach Remote Control to the resulting session and follow it in detail from your phone.

What Slack actually is, and what is replacing it

Of all six, Slack is furthest from Remote Control. An @Claude mention does not touch your machine at all: it creates a cloud session working from a GitHub clone. It works in public and private channels only, never in direct messages, and Claude has to be invited to a channel before it will answer there:

/invite @Claude

That invite requirement is more useful than it looks, because channel membership becomes your access control. Admins gate who can use Claude Code by managing which channels it lives in.

Two details worth knowing before you roll it out. Sessions run under each individual’s own account and rate limits, and they can only reach repositories that person personally connected. And on Team and Enterprise, sessions created from Slack are automatically visible to the whole organisation rather than private.

The error that generates the most confusion is Claude Code is not enabled for your account. It sounds like an admin block. It is not: it means that account has no cloud environment yet. Signing in once at claude.ai/code creates it and the error clears. Every user has to do this individually, which is why it arrives as a wave of complaints just after rollout.

Reaching all of this from your phone

There is no separate Claude Code app. The Claude app for iOS and Android is a client, and the Code tab reaches cloud sessions and Remote Control alike, while Dispatch is a task you message. To get the app quickly, run /mobile in any session and scan the QR code it displays. /ios and /android do the same.

The limitation that catches people out is permission modes, and it differs by session type:

Session type	Offered in the app	Not available
Cloud session	Accept edits, Plan, Auto	Bypass permissions
Remote Control	Manual, Accept edits, Plan	Bypass permissions, and Auto

So the mode you would most want for a long unattended remote session cannot be selected from the phone at all. Set it on the host before you leave. Full detail in permission modes, and the phone-specific behaviour in Remote Control on iPhone and Android.

The short version

• Machine off: Claude Code on the web, or a cloud scheduled task.
• Machine on, needs local files, you want to watch: Remote Control.
• Machine on, needs local files, you want to delegate: Dispatch, if you are on Pro or Max.
• Machine on, reacting to an external event: channels.
• Starting work from team conversation: Slack, or Claude Tag if you are on Team or Enterprise.