The Claude desktop app is a chat window: drop files, watch tool calls, handle work that is not a git tree. Claude Code CLI stands in the repo: read the tree, apply patches, leave history in the terminal.
If you mostly click files in an editor, use desktop. If you dispatch long jobs from a terminal next to git and CI, use the CLI. Both can take MCP; the config files live in different places.
Do not let both edit the same dirty tree. CLAUDE.md can be shared. Skills follow each client scan path: copy or symlink.
See the Claude Code course and MCP-in-Claude pages on this site. Prices and model names come from the vendor account page. This page does not list them.