Claude Desktop

Outcome: Claude Desktop chats route through daari's Anthropic gateway instead of the Anthropic cloud — local tiers first, frontier only when needed, with cache, budgets and traces that pointing it at raw Ollama cannot give you.

Fast path: daari configure claude-desktop (writes settings + prints a verify curl; see also daari setup claude-desktop).

Claude Desktop's third-party inference mode accepts any Anthropic-shaped gateway (the same mode Ollama 0.33 uses). daari speaks that protocol at /v1/messages, so the recipe only has to hand the app a configuration file.

Prerequisites

• daari serve on http://127.0.0.1:11435
• Claude Desktop installed (macOS, Windows or Linux)

Steps

daari setup claude-desktop --dry-run
daari setup claude-desktop
daari serve   # if not already running

Then fully quit and reopen Claude Desktop (configuration is read once at launch). If daari is not active, open Developer → Configure Third-Party Inference… → Import configuration and pick the file the recipe wrote.

The recipe writes daari.json into the app's saved-configuration library (backup first when a file already exists):

Platform	Path
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/Claude-3p/configLibrary/daari.json
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\Claude-3p\configLibrary\daari.json
Linux	~/.config/Claude-3p/configLibrary/daari.json

{
  "inferenceProvider": "gateway",
  "inferenceGatewayBaseUrl": "http://127.0.0.1:11435",
  "inferenceGatewayApiKey": "daari-local",
  "inferenceGatewayAuthScheme": "x-api-key",
  "inferenceModels": [{ "name": "daari", "labelOverride": "daari (local-first)" }]
}

The base URL has no /v1 suffix — the app appends /v1/messages itself, the same as Claude Code. When server.api_key is set, the recipe writes that key instead of daari-local. No tunnel required (localhost is fine).

daari setup all includes this recipe and skips cleanly when Claude Desktop is not installed.

Manual fallback

If you prefer not to let daari write into the app directory, or the app rejects the library file:

1. Save the JSON above anywhere (e.g. ~/daari-claude-desktop.json).
2. In Claude Desktop open Developer → Configure Third-Party Inference….
3. Set Inference provider to Gateway, then Import configuration and choose the file — or type the values by hand: Gateway base URL http://127.0.0.1:11435, Gateway API key daari-local, Credential kind Static API key, Gateway auth scheme x-api-key.
4. Quit and reopen the app.

Managed (MDM) deployments: the same keys go into the .mobileconfig / registry policy / /etc/claude-desktop/managed-settings.json; a managed source wins over the local library. See Anthropic's gateway provider reference for the full key list.

Verify

Chat once, then daari report. Requests arrive on /v1/messages; the x-daari-tier / x-daari-cache response headers show which tier served them.

Troubleshoot

Problem	Fix
App still uses Anthropic cloud	Fully quit (not just close the window) and reopen; check Developer → Configure Third-Party Inference… shows the daari configuration as applied
"no credential configured for provider gateway"	The API key field is empty — re-run daari setup claude-desktop --force
Model picker empty	daari's /v1/models must be reachable; the pinned inferenceModels entry shows daari regardless
MDM-managed machine ignores the file	A managed source wins; ask your admin to push the keys above

Undo

daari setup --undo claude-desktop

Restores the previous daari.json from backup, or removes the daari-written file when there was none.

Next

→ MCP — expose daari's tools to Claude Desktop as well
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