Claude's new Cursor killer just dropped

TL;DR

Anthropic's new Claude Code desktop app is riddled with bugs, poor UX, and half-baked features despite months of hype.

Key Points

• 1.Claude Code desktop app is not a standalone product. Anthropic integrated Claude Code into the existing Claude app alongside Claude Chat and Claude Co-work, rather than building a dedicated application.
• 2.The app's biggest improvement over the CLI is RAM usage. The virtual machine service uses ~2.5GB RAM total, and the desktop app itself uses less memory than the CLI — essentially the bar for progress.
• 3.Numerous critical bugs were found within minutes of use. These include: hotkeys firing in the wrong window, voice input bleeding into multiple chat boxes, permissions bypasses not saving, and image pastes attaching to the wrong message.
• 4.The diff view and file context features are broken or misleading. Diffs fail to render additions, the sidebar diff doesn't unfold properly, and the 'open file' feature adds a file the model can't actually see.
• 5.Anthropic forces project modifications just to use Claude Code. The default git worktree path requires users to update .gitignore, and Claude-specific files (CLAUDE.md, .claude directory) must be added — unlike competitors like Cursor.
• 6.Codex CLI is fully open source (Apache 2.0) with a public app server, but Claude Code is entirely closed. This closed approach prevents the community from contributing fixes, which Theo explicitly said he would do if it were open source.
• 7.T3 Code, built by two developers, outperforms Claude Code on nearly every metric. Proper hotkey binding, working diff views, favicon-fetching project switcher, and correct multi-tab terminal behavior were all implemented in a fraction of the time.
• 8.Anthropic's dual failure is locking users in without building quality. They neither released open tooling for the community to build on, nor shipped a polished enough product to justify the lock-in — making the app second or third most popular only due to existing Claude subscriptions.