Tom Osman
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Claude Code

// February 24, 2025

Claude Code homepage
Live preview captured from claude.com

Anthropic introduced Claude Code alongside the Claude 3.7 Sonnet release, framing it as "a command line tool for agentic coding" that lets developers "delegate substantial engineering tasks to Claude directly from their terminal." (Anthropic news) Their documentation expands on that promise, positioning Claude Code as an active collaborator that works in your terminal or IDE, with first-party support for macOS, Linux, Windows, VS Code, JetBrains, web, and CI. (Claude Code docs)

Why I reach for it

  • Full-stack operator. Claude Code does more than chat: it can search and read code, edit files, run commands, write and execute tests, and even commit or push to GitHub while keeping me in the loop.
  • Terminal-first UX. It embraces Unix philosophy. I can pipe logs into claude, script it inside CI, or let it watch a repo for lint issues without juggling new IDEs.
  • Wide context + MCP. With tool use and Model Context Protocol (MCP) connectors, Claude can pull docs from Figma, Google Drive, Jira, or Slack while reasoning over the entire project tree.
  • Speed + reasoning. Pairing it with Claude 3.7 Sonnet means I can toggle between near-instant responses and extended reasoning when I need deep debugging or multi-step planning.

Plays in my workflow

  1. Delegate bug hunts. I describe a production error, let Claude Code inspect the repo, reproduce the issue, and produce a fix + regression tests without me leaving the terminal.
  2. Ship feature drafts. Feed it a product spec; it breaks the work into steps, edits the right files, runs tests, and opens a PR with annotated commits.
  3. Automate tedious chores. Use CLI pipelines for localized tasks (tail -f log | claude) or CI automations (translate new strings, sync docs) that used to soak up evenings.

Access notes

  • Install via curl/Homebrew/NPM using the official quickstart, then run claude inside a repo to authenticate.
  • Prefer UIs? Anthropic ships a web experience, desktop app, and beta IDE extensions for VS Code and JetBrains.
  • Claude Code is currently a limited research preview, so expect evolving rate limits and reliability updates; Anthropic is actively iterating on tool-call stability, long-running commands, and renderers.
  • Enterprise needs (Bedrock, Vertex AI, compliance) are documented in the Claude Code security and deployment guides if you want to host it alongside existing infrastructure.
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