Claude Science Windows Launcher

Run Claude Science on Windows, as a real desktop app.

Anthropic ships Claude Science for macOS and Linux only. This gives Windows users a first-class launcher, backed by WSL2.

Overview

What is Claude Science?

Claude Science is Anthropic's "research partner for rigorous science." It runs analyses, searches databases, and traces every step from data wrangling to publication, so you can spend your time on the science instead of the plumbing.

It is built for life-sciences researchers (genomics, single-cell, proteomics, structural biology, and cheminformatics), and includes:

• Native scientific visualization: proteins, structures, molecules, alignments, genomic tracks, chemical structures
• Full reproducibility: code, environment, and conversation history attached to every artifact
• A background reviewer that flags incorrect citations and untraceable data
• Direct figure editing via plain-language annotations
• Manuscript drafting alongside your analyses
• Compute management across laptop, clusters, HPC, and GPUs
• 60+ scientific databases, persistent Python and R kernels, and reusable skill pipelines

Why this project exists

Claude Science is currently in beta, with official installers for macOS (Apple Silicon + Intel) and Linux. Windows is not supported.

But Windows users already have a first-class Linux environment sitting right there: WSL2. This project installs Claude Science inside a WSL distribution and gives you a pinnable Windows launcher with the Claude Science icon. Click it, and the app opens in your normal Windows browser. No terminal, no wsl commands, no fuss.

Click the taskbar icon  ->  WSL wakes up  ->  daemon starts  ->  browser opens

Not affiliated with Anthropic. This is an unofficial community wrapper. It ships no Anthropic binaries. It downloads and runs the official Claude Science installer inside your WSL distro.

Requirements

Step 0: Install WSL2 (skip if you already have it)

Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

wsl --install

Then reboot. On first launch you will be asked to create a UNIX username and password. Remember that password, you will need it once during installation.

Check it worked:

wsl --list --verbose      # your distro should show VERSION 2

📚 Official Microsoft guides:

• Install WSL: the canonical walkthrough
• Set up a WSL development environment: best practices
• WSL troubleshooting: when things go wrong
• Basic WSL commands: handy reference

Step 1: Install Claude Science

In Windows PowerShell (no admin needed if you are using an existing distro):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ben1ahrens/Claude-Science-Windows/main/install.ps1 | iex

The setup wizard will:

1. ✅ Check WSL is installed and working.
2. 🐧 Ask which distro to use. It detects the ones you already have, or offers to create a fresh Ubuntu-24.04 for you.
3. 📦 Provision Claude Science inside that distro (installs bubblewrap, socat, curl, then the official Claude Science installer). You will be asked for your WSL password once, for sudo.
4. 🚀 Create a "Claude Science" launcher in your Start Menu.

Preview without changing anything

To pass options you need a script block rather than a bare pipe into iex (iex has no parameters of its own):

& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ben1ahrens/Claude-Science-Windows/main/install.ps1))) -DryRun

Installer options

Use the script-block form above, or download install.ps1 and run it with powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1 <flags>.

Step 2: Pin it and launch

1. Open the Start Menu and type Claude Science.
2. Right-click the result, then Pin to taskbar.
3. Click it.

A console window flashes briefly (that is WSL waking up), then Claude Science opens in your default browser. Each click generates a fresh single-use login link, which is by design.

On the very first click the daemon has to cold-start, so give it a few seconds.

How it works

Taskbar click
  └─ Claude Science.lnk  ->  wsl.exe -d <distro> -- science-launch
        ├─ science-url   ->  start the claude-science daemon, return a single-use login URL
        └─ rundll32 url.dll,FileProtocolHandler <url>   ->  open the Windows default browser

The launcher is a plain Windows shortcut to Microsoft's own wsl.exe. There is no custom executable to install, sign, or get quarantined by antivirus. The browser is opened from inside WSL via rundll32, whose URL handler correctly handles & in login URLs.

Two small helpers are installed into the distro at /usr/local/bin:

Both are usable on their own from any WSL shell.

Troubleshooting

wsl -d <your-distro> -- science-launch

$s = (New-Object -ComObject WScript.Shell).CreateShortcut("$env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Claude Science.lnk")
$s.TargetPath; $s.Arguments

wsl --list --quiet
wsl -d Ubuntu-24.04 -- echo hi

wsl -d <other-distro> -- claude-science stop

wsl -d <your-distro> -- claude-science status
wsl -d <your-distro> -- claude-science logs
wsl -d <your-distro> -- claude-science stop

Uninstall

# Remove the launcher
Remove-Item "$env:APPDATA\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Claude Science.lnk"
Remove-Item -Recurse "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\ClaudeScienceLauncher"

# Remove the WSL-side helpers (Claude Science itself stays)
wsl -d <your-distro> -- sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/science-url /usr/local/bin/science-launch

Unpin from the taskbar by right-clicking the icon, then Unpin.

Development

Clone into WSL (not /mnt/c; ext4 is much faster), then drive the installer from your checkout:

# WSL side: preview, then run for real
bash wsl-setup.sh --dry-run
bash wsl-setup.sh
wsl -d <distro> -- science-url        # prints a http://localhost:<port>/?nonce=... URL
wsl -d <distro> -- science-launch     # opens it in the Windows browser

# Regenerate the icon from source art (pads to square, never stretches)
uv run tools/png-to-ico.py windows/icon-src/claude-science.png windows/claude-science.ico

# Windows side: install from the local checkout (works even if the repo is private)
$root = '\\wsl.localhost\<distro>\home\<you>\path\to\Claude-Science-Windows'
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File "$root\install.ps1" -Root "$root" -DryRun

Every mutating script supports --dry-run / -DryRun and changes nothing in that mode.

Layout

Optional: signed .exe launcher

The default .lnk needs no binary. If you want a flash-free .exe instead, windows/ has a tiny C# launcher and a build.ps1 that compiles it (icon embedded) with the csc.exe that ships with Windows. Only ship it code-signed. An unsigned build is reliably flagged as a false positive by SmartScreen and antivirus. Free and cheap options: Azure Trusted Signing (~$10/mo) or SignPath Foundation (free for public open source). The built .exe is git-ignored so an unsigned artifact is never committed.

Status

🚧 Beta. Installer, provisioner, launcher, and icon tooling are working and tested end-to-end. Known rough edge: the create a new distro path requires you to complete WSL's interactive first-run user setup before installation continues.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup, how to test a change, and the conventions this repo follows. Bugs in Claude Science itself belong with Anthropic rather than here.

License

MIT (c) Ben Ahrens.

Claude, Claude Science, and Anthropic are trademarks of Anthropic. This project is an unofficial community wrapper, is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic, and ships no Anthropic software. It invokes the official Claude Science installer. Your use of Claude Science is governed by Anthropic's own terms.