Claude Code Tutorial — Complete Beginner's Guide

Claude Code is Anthropic's command-line tool that gives Claude direct access to your terminal, file system, and development environment. Unlike web-based chat, Claude Code can read your entire codebase, run commands, execute tests, create and edit files, and make changes across your project — all from a single conversation in your terminal. To get started, install it globally with npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code, then run claude in your project directory. It will authenticate with your Anthropic account and you are ready to go.

The most important configuration file is CLAUDE.md, placed at the root of your project. This file tells Claude Code about your tech stack, coding conventions, project structure, available commands, and any rules it should follow. Think of it as a detailed onboarding document for an AI collaborator. A good CLAUDE.md includes your framework and language versions, directory structure, how to run the dev server and tests, database setup, naming conventions, and important architectural decisions. Claude Code reads this file automatically on every session, so the more thorough it is, the less you need to repeat yourself. You can also add a personal ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md for preferences that apply across all your projects.

Beyond basic chat, Claude Code has three powerful features worth learning early. Skills are reusable prompt instructions stored in .claude/skills/ that Claude Code can reference — useful for complex, repeatable tasks like deployment workflows or database migrations. MCP (Model Context Protocol) connections let Claude Code interact with external services: your prompt library, databases, APIs, and more. Hooks are automated triggers that run before or after certain events, like automatically linting code after Claude edits a file. Start with simple tasks like "explain this function" or "add error handling to this file," then progress to multi-file changes as you build trust in the workflow.