How to Use Claude Code: A Complete Step-by-Step Tutorial

Not strictly — Claude Code can explain codebases, generate code, and handle git for you without deep programming knowledge. That said, familiarity with a terminal helps significantly. If you know how to cd into a folder and run a command, you have enough to get started. The more you understand about what Claude is doing, the better you'll be able to guide it.

Claude Code is included in Claude Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans at no additional charge — usage counts against your plan's limits. If you use the Anthropic Console, you pay per token at API rates. Cloud provider pricing (Bedrock, Vertex, Azure) follows each provider's Claude pricing schedule. Check console.anthropic.com for current token prices.

Your code stays on your machine. Claude Code only sends to Anthropic's servers what you include in prompts — the specific file contents it reads as context for a given request. It does not upload your entire project in the background. Review Anthropic's privacy policy for full details on data handling.

claude launches an interactive session where you have a back-and-forth conversation. claude "task" also launches an interactive session, but pre-populates your first message — useful for jumping straight in. claude -p "task" is the non-interactive variant: it runs the query once, prints the output to stdout, and exits — ideal for scripting and CI pipelines.

It's a Markdown file you create at the root of your project (or in a parent directory for global settings). Claude reads it at the start of every session. Use it to document your tech stack, coding style, environment setup commands, naming conventions, and any constraints Claude should know about. Think of it as onboarding documentation for an AI collaborator. The more context you put here, the less you have to re-explain every session.

Yes. Claude Code can run any shell command — npm test, pytest, cargo build, make, whatever your project uses. It will ask for your approval before running a command for the first time in a session. You can grant blanket approval for a command type to streamline repeated runs.

In Plan Mode, Claude lays out the full sequence of actions it intends to take before doing anything. This is useful when the task is complex, touches many files, or carries risk (database schema changes, large refactors, infrastructure modifications). Review the plan, ask questions, request adjustments, then approve. Claude proceeds only after you confirm.

Yes. Claude Code integrates with GitHub Actions, so you can run it as part of your CI/CD pipeline — for automated code review, test generation, or changelog drafting on every pull request. There is also a native GitHub integration for comment-driven workflows. See the Claude Code GitHub repo for CI configuration examples.

All major languages and most minor ones — if it is a text file, Claude can read and write it. This includes Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go, Rust, Java, C/C++, Ruby, PHP, Swift, Kotlin, Elixir, Haskell, SQL, shell scripts, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi), and configuration formats (YAML, TOML, JSON). Language support is not a separate feature — it is a function of the underlying model's training.

claude opens a persistent, interactive session where you have a conversation. Your message history accumulates and Claude uses prior context for each response. claude -p "query" is stateless: one query in, one response out, then the process exits. Use -p in shell scripts, GitHub Actions, cron jobs, or any automated context where you do not need back-and-forth dialogue.