Appendix: reproducing the observations

The commands

Run these commands in the Bash tool of a cloud Claude session. Print only the variables listed. Never print values whose names contain TOKEN, KEY or SECRET, because those are credentials. The run date for this section was November 9, 2026, at 02:45 UTC. Version strings and variable names are a snapshot from that date, and they will change.

# 1. Init process and VM uptime
ps -o pid,etime,args -p 1
# 2. Process ancestry of the shell
p=$$; while [ "$p" -gt 1 ]; do ps -o pid=,ppid=,args= -p $p | cut -c1-160; p=$(ps -o ppid= -p $p | tr -d ' '); done
# 3. Claude Code binary and version
which claude; readlink -f "$(which claude)"; claude --version
# 4. Selected environment variables
env | grep -E '^(CLAUDE_CODE_(REMOTE|ENTRYPOINT|SESSION_ORIGIN|VERSION|EXECPATH)|ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL)='
# 5. Working transcript location
ls ~/.claude/projects

Here is what each command does, in plain words:

1. Shows the first program the computer started (PID 1) and how long it has been running (its uptime).
2. Follows the chain of programs that started the shell, one parent at a time (its process ancestry).
3. Finds the claude program, follows any link to the real file, and prints its version.
4. Prints only the selected environment variables.
5. Lists the folder where Claude Code keeps its working transcripts.

What each step showed

A reset experiment

Run step 1 at the start of two turns, with an idle gap between them, and write down both times. In the first turn, also write a small marker file to the VM's own disk, for example date > /tmp/marker.txt.

• If the marker is still there in the second turn, the same VM was restored. The sandbox and its state quotes the documented pause and restore.
• If the marker is gone, the VM was reclaimed and a fresh one started.
• Do not rely on uptime alone. A restored VM may not count the time it spent paused, so a short uptime does not prove a new machine.

On November 8 and 9, the uptime was short and the demo file came back only as a copy from the conversation. The marker test was not run then. How long a paused VM is kept is still unknown.

Caveats

Claims in this section carry the labels Observed, Reported by ChatGPT, Tool-documented, Vendor-documented, Inferred or Unknown. The overview explains each one.

The observations come from one cloud Claude chat session on November 8 and 9, 2026. They may not hold for every plan, account or surface. Beyond Anthropic's published overview, the internal architecture cannot be seen from inside a session. Vendor behavior, feature flags and availability may change.

Sources

The full details of each source are in this page's source list.

• Claude Desktop, Code tab docs (Anthropic): the environments Local, Cloud, SSH and WSL.
• Panaversity's inspection of a cloud Claude session: a Python test run on November 8, 2026, and a process and environment inspection on November 9, 2026. The method is on this page.
• ChatGPT's inspection of its own Python and terminal environment, November 9, 2026, as reported to Panaversity.
• Agents API architecture (OpenAI API docs): the hosted harness, the environment and the application server as separate parts.
• ChatGPT Work cloud security (ChatGPT docs): Work Cloud's own execution environment.
• Claude Managed Agents overview (Claude Platform docs): the hosted harness and sandbox, sessions, events and beta status.
• Managed Better Auth is now an OAuth provider, with MCP support (Neon, November 2026).
• Better Auth MCP plugin (Better Auth docs).
• Schedule recurring tasks in Claude Code Desktop (Claude Code docs): local, cloud and /loop tasks, missed runs, permissions and requiresUserInteraction.
• Let Claude coordinate ongoing work with Projects (Claude Code docs): the coordinator, threads, standing context, sandbox resume, local threads, limits and beta status.
• Projects redesigned: from folder to conversation (Anthropic blog, September 17, 2026).
• Use Claude Code in the cloud (Claude Code docs): idle sessions, reclaimed VMs and what is restored.
• Configure cloud environments (Claude Code docs): idle VMs pausing and being restored, network access levels, setup scripts and the environment cache, environment variables, network secrets, the GitHub proxy and shared environments.
• Self-hosted environments (Claude Code docs): environments, runners and sessions, leases, what stays on your machines, model routing, availability and limits.
• Verify session identity in self-hosted environments (Claude Code docs): the session token, its claims, what it proves and how to check it.
• Message your other Claude Code sessions (Claude Code docs): how messages travel, what a message can and cannot do, inbound controls and limits.
• How agent identity works, and Security and data handling (Claude Tag docs): service accounts, the credential store, access scope, sandboxes for each thread and availability.
• Automate work with scheduled tasks (Claude Code docs): cloud runs as full Claude Code cloud sessions, fresh copies of repositories, auto mode and limits.
• Claude Cowork architecture overview (Anthropic Help Center): the sandbox for each session, the egress proxy, credentials and plan availability.
• Unlocking the Codex harness: how we built the App Server (OpenAI, February 2026).
• Introducing ChatGPT agent (OpenAI, July 2025).
• ChatGPT: What's new (OpenAI).
• ChatGPT sandbox docs (OpenAI).
• OpenAI is folding Codex into the ChatGPT app (The New Stack, July 2026).
• Work with Claude Tag, overview (Claude Tag docs): Claude in team Slack channels, plans and availability.
• Run agents in parallel (Claude Code docs): subagents, agent view, agent teams, dynamic workflows and projects compared.
• Linux Foundation launches the Agent2Agent protocol project (Linux Foundation, June 23, 2025).
• Tour of the Apps: the product features this section builds on.