Claude Code Projects is a beta feature (waitlist, now effectively open) that puts a Claude orchestrator in Anthropic's cloud, where it spawns and manages persistent full Claude sessions called threads. Unlike sub-agents, each thread keeps its own context window, opens its own pull requests, can be messaged directly, and keeps running when your machine is off — and it bills against your Max subscription usage rather than API credits. The video walks through the settings (coordinator vs thread models, memory, GitHub repo, cloud environments, secrets, local folder access) and a 25-minute demo where one prompt split into five parallel threads that built an "AI Creator Radar" dashboard.
- Projects runs in Anthropic's cloud but draws from your Max plan usage instead of API billing, which the host calls the main change from previous Anthropic cloud offerings.
- Access requires submitting an application on a waitlist page; the host says turnaround is now under 24 hours and that everyone was let off the waitlist a few weeks ago.
- Threads are not sub-agents: they're persistent full sessions with their own context windows, they own their own pull requests, and you can message any of them directly as well as through the orchestrator.
- Don't use it for quick one-session tasks, work that must manipulate local files, or team/enterprise setups; do use it for long-running, complex builds that split into parts and live in a GitHub repo.
- Default models are Opus on low effort for the coordinator (it only delegates, so low is fine) and Opus on medium for threads; usage can burn fast with 10-15 workers running at once, and there's an auto-continue setting that resumes work when limits reset.
- Setup requires designating a GitHub repo; adding API keys means creating a custom cloud environment with network access and secrets, which the demo had to do mid-run to clear a blocker.
- You can enable local device access with pre-approved folders — in the demo, the X-scanning thread ran locally to use logged-in browser cookies and built a scheduled routine on the machine.
- A debug access panel lets one project inspect another to troubleshoot a poisoned context or stuck memory.
- Boris Cherny, who created Claude Code, reportedly stopped managing desktop sessions and uses Projects as a backlog/dumping ground for ideas since everything shares memory.
This is the core technical distinction that makes Projects different from the sub-agent pattern people already use.
They're full sessions because they have their own context window. Furthermore, they're persistent. They'll own their own pull requests. And because these workers are persistent and they maintain context throughout, we can also message them as much as we want.
Shows the actual orchestration output and the review/blocker workflow you'd be managing day to day.
After we gave it the prompt, it split into five parallel threads, and each thread was given some piece of the pie that it needed to execute on... I have two that are now ready for review. I have three that have some sort of blocker.
Instead of you being in charge of managing all of these separate threads, guess who does it? Well, Claude does it.
Sessions with sub-agents is best when we're just doing one task at a time. These projects are great if we have a stream of work we just don't want to babysit.
The real sell for projects at this point isn't the singular thing it created. It's the fact that this is now something that is living in the cloud.