Run Claude in Docker for AI-Assisted Development

At this point in time I’m using Claude Code as code assistant for my daily work. I have adopted it as a generator for pretty specific tasks, like generating types, writing UI pages with components that I have already implemented, generate tests, generate endpoints for the services I have integrated or domain logic I have prepared before.

Pretty much the outer layer of my software is generated by Claude Code, then I review it, apply it, test it and move on.

Of course theres cases where I rather writing it myself, or when I found my self in the 3rd try to generate a specific piece of code, I just stop and write it myself.

So its helpful, but not perfect.

In any case, I’m kind of a security concerned guy, and I don’t like the idea of any arbitrary command/code running on my machine at any point without my consent.

So I take advantage of Docker containers and its isolation capabilities to run Claude Code in a container, and I only give it access to the folders I want it to have access to. Usually that folder is a single repository.

As I was copying the same Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml to every project I wanted to integrate with Claude Code, I decided to create a base image that I can use as a base for all my projects.

Let me introduce you to leoborai/claude-code Docker image.

Usage

I usually create a dev directory where the Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml would be, like I did in my DeckMaster project.

Even though I still use the dev directory, to split logic from actual project/domain logic, the Dockerfile is no needed anymore, as I can use the image directly.

services:
  claude:
    image: 'ghcr.io/leoborai/docker-claude:latest'
    volumes:
      - ../:/workspaces/dev
    command: sleep infinity

With this docker-compose.dev.yml file, I can run docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up -d and have a container running with Claude Code installed, and my project mounted in /workspaces/dev.

Then I just exect into the container with docker exec -it <container_id> /bin/bash and start using Claude Code as regular.

Conclusion

This is a simple way to run Claude Code in a secure way, and have it isolated from my machine. Feel free to checkout the repo here: https://github.com/LeoBorai/docker-claude and provide any suggestions or improvements via either issues or PRs.

Happy Coding!