What is claude-desktop-proxy?

Claude Desktop Proxy is a local desktop application that sits between the Claude Desktop app and the AI models it talks to. Instead of sending your requests directly to Anthropic, it intercepts them and forwards them to third-party model providers of your choosing. You can define multiple configuration groups, each with its own API endpoint, API key, and model mappings, and switch between them as needed. Setup works by pointing Claude Desktop's gateway URL to the proxy running locally on your machine, typically at a localhost address. You then configure the proxy itself with the real API endpoint and key for whichever model provider you actually want to use, along with a list of model names to expose. The proxy translates the Claude model name in each incoming request to the corresponding upstream model name you have mapped, so Claude Desktop believes it is talking to Claude while the request actually goes elsewhere. If a request arrives using a model name that has no configured mapping, the proxy returns an error instead of guessing. The app is built with Tauri, a framework for building desktop apps using web technology, paired with React, and is written in TypeScript. It produces installable packages for both macOS and Windows through GitHub Actions, with release builds published to the project's GitHub Releases page. The README also documents common installation issues, including a blank console window on Windows and a Gatekeeper warning on macOS for unsigned builds, along with the workaround commands for each. The README is written in Chinese, with a separate English translation file linked at the top. The project is tagged under the topics claude, claude-desktop, claude-desktop-proxy, and proxy.