What Is Claude Code? A Complete Guide for Developers and SMBs

Claude Code is Anthropic's AI coding assistant that writes, debugs, and refactors code from your terminal. Here's everything you need to know — install…

How Claude Code Actually Works: The Agentic Loop

Installation: Step by Step

Your First 5 Prompts (With What to Expect)

The CLAUDE.md File: Your Project's Secret Weapon

What a Real Session Looks Like

Cost Reality: What Claude Code Actually Costs

The Skills System: Teaching Claude Code Your Standards

Common Beginner Mistakes

If you run a small or mid-sized business and you have heard the buzz about AI coding tools but are not sure where to start, this is the guide. Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic AI coding tool that lives inside your terminal. It reads your entire codebase, plans multi-file changes, executes commands, runs tests, and iterates — all from a single natural language prompt.

This is not autocomplete. This is not "suggest the next line." Claude Code is an autonomous coding agent that can take a description like "add user authentication with email, password hashing, JWT tokens, and rate limiting" and implement the entire feature across multiple files, install the required packages, write tests, and verify everything works. Think of it as a senior developer on call 24/7 who never gets tired and works for a few dollars per hour.

Traditional AI coding tools like GitHub Copilot work inline — they predict the next line of code as you type. Claude Code works differently. It runs in a loop:

This loop is what makes it "agentic" — it does not just suggest code, it takes actions, observes results, and adjusts. You stay in control because it asks for permission before making changes, and you can intervene at any point.

Getting Claude Code running takes about 5 minutes. Here is the exact process.

That is it. You are now in an interactive Claude Code session. Type your first prompt and watch it analyze your project.