Three ways Trama works with Claude Code
- Claude Code as a step in your automations. Trama hands a task to Claude Code and delivers its answer. This is the main use, and the rest of this page is about it.
- Claude Code as Trama’s AI. In onboarding or Settings → General → AI Provider, pick Claude Code. Trama uses it to build your automations and for its AI steps, through the account you already signed in with. No API key.
- Trama as a tool for Claude Code. Turn on Settings → General → “Let coding agents use Trama”, and Claude Code can list, run, switch on and off, and create your automations over MCP. New automations still open in Trama for you to review.
What to type
Press Cmd+Option+X from any app and name Claude Code in your description. A few that work well:
“When I copy a GitHub pull request link, have Claude Code review it and post the review to Slack.”
“When I copy an error message, ask Claude Code what it means in my project ~/code/shop and show me the answer.”
“Every Monday at 9am, have Claude Code research what changed this week in the Swift ecosystem and save a report to my Desktop.”
“When I select a bug report and press Cmd+Shift+B, have Claude Code fix it in ~/code/shop. Let me watch it in Terminal.”
If anything is unclear — which project, which channel, which commands — Trama asks before it builds. You see every step before anything runs.
The two Claude Code steps
| Ask Claude Code | Start Claude Code agent | |
|---|---|---|
| For | Quick questions whose answer the next step uses: “what does this error mean here?”, “which file handles login?” | Work that takes minutes: reviewing a pull request, research across several sources, a report, fixing a bug. |
| How it runs | The automation waits for the answer, up to 2 minutes. | In the background. The automation finishes right away, and the answer arrives when Claude Code is done. |
| Where the answer goes | Into the next step. | To the automation’s outputs: Slack, a file, the clipboard or a notification. |
| Access | Always read-only. | Read-only, or can edit files in the project folder. |
| Follow along | — | Don’t show, watch in Trama, watch in Terminal, or talk to it in Terminal. |
What Claude Code can and can’t do
- Read-only by default. It can read files in the project folder, search and read the web, and run the commands you allow.
- Editing is opt-in. With edit access it can change files, and Trama shows you the task, the folder and the commands before every run. Read-only steps ask once, and you can choose “Always allow”.
- Only narrow commands. You list commands like
gh pr vieworgh pr diff. General-purpose commands that could do anything on their own —git,gh api,curl, shells, interpreters,osascript,sudo— are dropped even if a workflow lists them. - Nothing else is asked, only refused. When it runs in the background, any tool outside that list is refused. In an interactive Terminal session you are there, so Claude Code asks you.
- A new input doesn’t ask again. Approval covers the task as you wrote it, so the next pull request link runs without a prompt. Changing what the step may do asks again.
Connect Claude Code to Trama
To let Claude Code run and create your automations, turn on Settings → General → “Let coding agents use Trama”, then run this once in Terminal:
claude mcp add --scope user trama -- "/Applications/Trama.app/Contents/MacOS/Trama" --mcpClaude Code then has six tools: list your workflows, show one, run one, list recent runs, switch one on or off, and create one from a description. Only apps running under your Mac user can connect, and there is no network port.
What you need
Claude Code 2.1.38 or later, installed and signed in. Trama finds it even if it is not on the PATH a Mac app sees. Any Trama plan, Free included: Claude Code steps run on your Mac and do not count toward the daily integration steps. Trama runs on macOS 15.7 or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Prefer Codex? The same steps run on it — see Trama and Codex.
Questions
Do I need an Anthropic API key to use Claude Code with Trama?
No. Trama runs the Claude Code already installed on your Mac, signed in with your own account, so there is no key to paste into Trama.
Can Claude Code change my files when Trama starts it?
Only if you give the step edit access, and only through file edits in the folder you chose. Trama shows you the task, the folder and the allowed commands before every run of a step that can edit. Read-only is the default, and quick questions are always read-only.
Which commands can Claude Code run inside a Trama workflow?
Only the narrow commands listed in the step, such as gh pr view or gh pr diff. General-purpose commands that could do anything, like git, gh api, curl, shells or sudo, are dropped even if a workflow lists them. Anything outside the list is refused, not asked.
Which Trama plan do I need?
Any plan, including Free. Claude Code steps run on your Mac, so they do not count toward the daily integration steps.
Is Trama made by Anthropic?
No. Trama is an independent Mac app that works with the Claude Code you install from Anthropic.