Your Claude Subscription, Working in AICoven on Your Mac

Most people who use Claude every day pay for a subscription, not for API tokens, and until now AICoven asked them to go and get an API key anyway, which is a bit like asking someone who already owns a car to rent one so they can drive it to your house. The AICoven Helper is how we stopped asking. It lets the Claude subscription you already have answer in your covens, from your own Mac, signed in your own way.

Coming in AICoven 3.2.0.

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How it works

The helper is a small program that runs on your Mac, next to the AICoven app. It doesn't contain Claude and it doesn't log in to anything. It drives Anthropic's own Claude program, the one you install from Anthropic and sign in to yourself, unmodified, and passes its answers back to AICoven.

A message takes this path: your iPhone or Mac, AICoven's API, the AICoven app on your Mac, the helper, Claude, and back. Your messages still go through our API, because that's where threading and continuity live, and the reply is stored encrypted like every other reply in AICoven. What never passes through us is your Claude sign-in. Anthropic's rules say an app like ours may not offer Claude's login, or collect, store or pass on Claude credentials, and the helper is built so it has nothing to pass on: it never reads, copies or logs your sign-in, never sets an authentication variable, and never calls Anthropic itself. Claude's own program does that, as it would if you were using it on its own.

This is not offline, and it is not local inference. Claude still answers from Anthropic. The "local" part is the sign-in, which stays on your Mac, where you left it.

Connecting it

On your Mac, open Settings → AI connections. Under Your Claude subscription, the Claude row tells you what it needs, one thing at a time:

• AICoven Helper isn't running on this Mac. Once it is, Check Again.
• Claude isn't installed on this Mac. Install Claude from Anthropic takes you to Anthropic's setup page.
• Claude isn't signed in on this Mac. Sign in to Claude opens Anthropic's own sign-in page in your browser, and the row reads Finish signing in in your browser. while you do.
• Ready on this Mac, with your plan when Claude reports it. Tap Connect Claude.

On your iPhone or iPad the same section reads Set up on your Mac, because there is nothing to set up there, and once connected the account shows as Claude · on your Mac everywhere you see your accounts.

What it's like to use

You pick Claude for an agent like any other connection. Your coven's memory and instructions go with every message, so Claude starts each turn knowing what the coven knows. The reply streams in as Claude writes, Stop stops it, and a conversation picks up where it left off.

You can send from your iPhone, and your Mac answers. The footer under the connection says the important part plainly: Claude answers while this Mac is awake and AICoven is open. If your Mac is asleep, the message waits and goes when it wakes. If the helper isn't running, the message fails with AICoven Helper isn't running on your Mac. Start it, then send your message again. If you hit your plan's limit, it says You've reached your Claude usage limit., with the time it resets when Anthropic gives one.

What it won't do, on purpose

A subscription is for one person's own use, and the helper holds to that.

• No automations. Scheduled work runs with no one sending it, so a Claude subscription can't run it. Save an automation on a Claude agent and AICoven refuses it: "Claude on your Mac answers only messages you send. Pick an agent with an API key for automations."
• Only you. Only the person who connected Claude can send messages through it, in shared covens too. One account per connection, no pooling.
• No tools yet. In this first version Claude works from the conversation and your coven's context. It can't run commands or open files on your Mac, and it doesn't load your own Claude configuration, so your personal settings stay out of your covens.

None of this rules out an API key. The Anthropic key connection still works on every device and in automations, and you can keep both.

Getting the helper

The AICoven Helper is a small, signed and notarized Mac app you download from aicoven.ai. It runs in the background, with no window and nothing to configure, and the Claude row in AICoven links to it. Once it's running, AICoven finds it on its own; if it isn't, the Claude row tells you so.

The honest caveat: this rests on Anthropic's current rules, which allow you to use their unmodified program with your own subscription, including where another product runs it. If those rules change, this connection stops working, and the API key is what remains, which is exactly why we kept it.