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Comment by alberth

1 day ago

OT: my 14-year old nephew would like to use Claude Code. How do they signup for an account given they don’t have a cellphone?

(Sure, I could let them use my credentials but that isn’t really legit/fair use.)

Surely your love for your nephew is priceless ?

Do the right thing, sign up for an API account and put some credits on there...

(and keep topping up those credits ;-)

Like other posters said, maybe a local model is a good option. I've found the Qwen3:4B (reasoning) model works pretty well for many things.

I'm planning to run a local model on a $149 mini-pc and host it for the world from my bedroom. You can read a bit more about my thinking below.

https://joeldare.com/my_plan_to_build_an_ai_chat_bot_in_my_b...

These hosted models are better but it feels like the gap is closing and I hope it continues to close.

Use a local model like Qwen3-4B-Thinking-2507 or Gemini CLI, which has a generous free tier.

Have someone who isn't ever going to use claude code sign up for him and then give him the credentials. (do you have a partner or other relative not in tech?)