On 25 August, Ollama described how Claude Desktop can connect to its models through external connection settings. This is a relatively recent option to explore, even though the announcement came before September.
One important distinction is easy to miss: you are not automatically running Anthropic’s Claude model on your own computer. The app’s interface can connect to a different model. That model, in turn, can run locally or in the cloud.
For the curious, this shows how AI tools are becoming more interchangeable. You might like a particular workspace but want to try another engine behind the answers.
This takes a little more setup than opening an ordinary chat, so it does not have to be your first step. But the direction is interesting: more choice could make it easier to find a combination that suits both your computer and what you want to create.