Claude Desktop
Anthropic's official Mac and Windows desktop application for using Claude with MCP servers, voice input, artifacts, and persistent chat history.
Claude Desktop is the friendliest entry point for non-developers. It reads claude_desktop_config.json at startup and auto-connects to any configured MCP server, exposing those tools inside the conversation UI. Each tool call surfaces a confirmation dialog (which you can disable) so you stay in control of what Claude actually executes.
Distinguishing features over the web app: filesystem access via MCP (read PDFs, edit local files), voice input/output, artifacts that persist across sessions, system tray integration, offline cache. It's free; you sign in with your Anthropic account and use the same plan you'd use on claude.ai.
Trade-off vs Claude Code: Claude Desktop is GUI-first and not designed for autonomous coding sessions. For software engineering, Claude Code (CLI) is the right tool. They share the same MCP server pool — configure once, use everywhere.