Free Claude Code setup with Ollama and other backends

Free Claude Code is presented as a proxy that connects the Claude Code coding assistant to alternative model providers. The speaker explains that it forwards or translates requests and streams responses back into the existing interface. It does not provide free access to Claude Sonnet; the selected backend supplies the model.

The tutorial covers cloud providers NVIDIA NIM, OpenRouter and DeepSeek, alongside LM Studio, llama.cpp and Ollama for a local LLM setup. The speaker notes that hardware and model choice affect local speed and quality, while tool calling varies between models. Remote providers have usage limits and changing model availability.

The source-checkout setup shown in this recording uses Claude Code, uv and Python 3.14. Viewers copy .env.example to .env, configure a provider and model, start the proxy on port 8082, then point Claude Code's Anthropic base URL at http://localhost:8082. The video also explains environment settings for VS Code and IntelliJ, plus mappings that route Opus, Sonnet and Haiku requests to different models.

Later sections cover a model picker, request optimization, rate limiting and remote sessions through Discord or Telegram. The speaker advises setting an authentication token when the proxy is accessible over a network and restricting bot users, channels and workspace directories because these sessions can execute code.