Quickstart: Claude Code on Macswarm

Before you start

• Self-hosted environments are a Claude Team and Enterprise feature (public beta). Claude Pro and Max accounts cannot create one, but they can sign in to Claude Code inside a Pod; see the FAQ.
• Your repositories must be reachable over HTTPS or SSH from the Pod. Pods only make outbound connections, to api.anthropic.com and your git host.
• Model usage is billed by Anthropic to your organization. Macswarm bills the Pod-hours.

1. Create the key in Claude

In your Claude organization settings, create a self-hosted environment and copy its key. The key identifies your organization to Macswarm; it never ships inside a Pod image.

2. Connect it in Macswarm

1. Sign up or sign in. The Free plan has 3 Pod-hours, enough for the first sessions.
2. Open Environments and choose Connect Claude.
3. Paste the key, pick a region (EU or US) and save. Macswarm warms a pool for your organization; the status turns to Connected when the first Pod is ready.
4. Optional: add deploy keys or a GitHub App so Pods can clone private repositories, and store the secrets your builds need. Secrets are injected at session start and never written into the golden image.

3. Start a session as usual

From claude.ai, Claude Desktop or Slack, start a Claude Code session and pick the Macswarm environment. A clean Pod boots from the warm pool in a few seconds, your repository is cloned, and the agent has Xcode, iOS runtimes and pre-booted Simulators.

Try a task that needs a Mac:

Fix the crash on the notification prompt, run the UI tests on an iPhone Simulator and open a PR.

The agent builds with xcodebuild, leases a Simulator from the pool, taps through the app with XcodeBuildMCP, reads logs and attaches screenshots to the PR. Commits are attributed to you, the developer who started the session.

4. Run several agents on one Pod

Start more sessions from the same environment. They share your Pod in separate git worktrees. Two to three active agents per standard Pod are guaranteed; beyond that, builds queue and Simulators are leased in turn. Details are in Limits and queues.

5. Finish

When a session ends, the agent commits and pushes. If anything is left uncommitted, Macswarm pushes a rescue branch named after the session before the Pod is destroyed. Ten minutes after the last session the Pod is gone, and the meter stops.

Troubleshooting

• Connected, but no Pod boots. Check the plan’s Pods-at-a-time limit and your region’s warm pool status in the dashboard.
• Clone fails. The git host must accept the deploy key or GitHub App you added in step 2. Pods have no inbound network, so self-hosted git servers need a public endpoint or an Enterprise private network.
• Builds queue. Two concurrent xcodebuild runs per Pod. Start another Pod (Pro allows four at a time) or let the queue drain.

Next: What is inside a Pod.