What is Claude Code?

Claude Code is an agentic coding assistant from Anthropic. Instead of coding in a code editor like Visual Studio Code, you just prompt Claude from a terminal and it does the work for you.

I started using GitHub Copilot when the big AI wave happened in 2023, and it was fantastic as a much smarter autocomplete. GitHub later added an “Agents” tab that could handle bigger tasks across the codebase, like completing entire tickets. Then I discovered Claude Code, and it was a complete game changer. I barely even open a code editor anymore. All my coding work now goes through Claude Code.

What makes Claude Code different is that it’s a true assistant. You tell it what you want at a high level, and it does all the work. It can read files, search your codebase, run commands, edit code, and even spawn multiple specialized agents to work on different parts of a task in parallel.

For example, you might say “Add user authentication to this app” and Claude Code will plan out the work, create the necessary files, write the code, run tests to verify everything works, and even create a git commit. Or you could ask “Why is this test failing?” and it will read the test file, look at the implementation, run the test to see the error, and suggest a fix.

Claude Code works with any codebase in any language. It understands context from your project structure, git history, and package files. It can also integrate with external services like databases or APIs. It maintains conversation context across multiple interactions, so you can have back-and-forth discussions about your code.

OpenAI has a similar tool called Codex, but when I tried both, Claude Code was much better, IMHO.

See the official documentation for more details.