What
Starting a cloud session that cannot ship your working tree now says no session was started and why: either the local changes were too large, or bundling them failed. Both messages point you at --ref <branch> to start from GitHub instead, with file sync off.
Details
- The two reasons are distinguished internally as
local_changes_too_largeandlocal_changes_bundle_failed.
Evidence
so the working tree cannot be uploaded instead
Strings lifted out of the shipped bundle, so the claim above can be checked against them.
The entry above is what we published on the day. These lines were added later, as Anthropic's own pages caught up, and they sit beside the original rather than replacing it.
Added since
A small documentation edit on Environment variables touched a line naming --cloud after this was published.
| `CCR_FORCE_BUNDLE` | Set to `1` to force [`claude --cloud`](/docs/en/claude-code-on-the-web#send-local-repositories-without-github) to bundle and upload your local repository instead of cloning from its remote |env-vars see the edit
Confirmed since
Anthropic's documentation has since written up --cloud, on Use Claude Code on the web.
`--cloud` works with a single repository at a time. The task runs in the cloud while you continue working locally. The older `--remote` spelling still works as a deprecated alias for `--cloud`.claude-code-on-the-web see the edit
One source agreesOne thing we can check says the same as this entry.
Anthropic's documentation agrees
Anthropic's documentation has since written up --cloud, on Use Claude Code on the web.