Claude Code
Practical guides to Claude Code: plan mode, hooks, skills, subagents, MCP servers, headless runs, costs and running it remotely.
27 posts
What Is MCP? The Model Context Protocol for Beginners
MCP is a standard way to plug tools and data into AI apps — a USB-C port for AI. What the Model Context Protocol is, what servers and clients are, what tools, resources, and prompts do, real examples, and the safety questions to ask before connecting one.
What Is Claude Code? A Beginner's Guide
Claude Code is Anthropic's AI coding agent: instead of just suggesting code in a chat, it reads your project, edits files, runs commands, and checks its own work. What it is, where you can use it, what it costs, and how to get started without getting into trouble.
What Is an AI Coding Agent? (And How It's Different From a Chatbot)
AI coding tools come in three flavours: chatbots that answer, assistants that autocomplete, and agents that take actions — editing files, running commands, and checking their own work. What makes something an agent, why it matters, and what agents need to work well and safely.
Agent Hosting Is Becoming Free. Here's What Isn't.
Anthropic now ships ways to keep Claude Code running without your laptop — Remote Control, cloud sessions, scheduled Routines. That's good news, and it changes what's worth paying for. The session is becoming a commodity. The environment the work ships into is not.
A tmux Cheat Sheet for Long-Running Sessions (and AI Agents)
tmux keeps terminal sessions running after you disconnect — which is exactly what you want for a build, a dev server, or an AI agent working on a remote machine. The twenty commands that cover almost everything, a small config that makes it pleasant, and the habits for running agents inside it.
How to Run Claude Code on a Remote Server (and Keep It Running)
Running Claude Code on a server instead of your laptop means sessions survive a closed lid, a dropped connection, and a flat battery. A practical setup guide — the server, the session, the security — and what you take on by doing it yourself.
How to Resume a Claude Code Session (and What Resuming Can't Bring Back)
claude --continue and claude --resume reopen yesterday's conversation in seconds. But a resumed session restores the conversation, not the world it was working in. The commands, the habits that make resuming reliable, and the gap between conversation state and environment state.
Running Claude Code Agents in Parallel With Git Worktrees
Two agents in one checkout will overwrite each other's work. Git worktrees give each Claude Code session its own files and branch on the same repository. How to set it up, and the parts nobody warns you about: ports, databases, and dependencies.
How to Keep Claude Code Costs Down (Without Making It Worse)
Claude Code usage is driven less by how much you ask and more by how much context every request carries. Where the tokens actually go, how to see them, and the habits that cut usage — clearing between tasks, picking the right model, trimming CLAUDE.md, and planning before building.
How to Install Claude Code on Mac, Windows, and Linux
A step-by-step guide to installing Claude Code: the recommended native installer, Homebrew, WinGet, and npm; which account you need; signing in; checking it works with claude doctor; updating; and fixing the install problems beginners hit most often.
How to Write a CLAUDE.md That Actually Changes What Claude Does
Most CLAUDE.md files are either empty or a wall of generic advice Claude would have followed anyway. What to put in one, what to leave out, how the files load, and how to tell whether yours is working.
Evals for Coding Agents: Measuring Whether Your Agent Setup Actually Works
Changing a CLAUDE.md, model, skill, or MCP server changes agent behaviour, usually untested. How to build an eval suite for coding-agent workflows: task selection, hermetic environments, graders, pass@k vs pass^k, cost and trajectory metrics, and running headless in CI.
Claude Pro vs Max vs API Key for Claude Code: Which Should You Pay For?
Claude Code works with a Pro subscription, a Max subscription, or pay-as-you-go API billing. They're metered differently and suit different ways of working. How to choose, with a simple way to check your own usage.
Claude Code vs the Claude Chat App: Which Should You Use for Coding?
Both run on Claude models and come with the same subscription. The chat app is a conversation; Claude Code is an agent that works inside your project. What each does well, where each falls short, how they share usage limits, and a simple rule for when to use which.
Claude Code Subagents: When to Split the Work (and When Not To)
Subagents give Claude Code a second context window: a helper that does a noisy job — running tests, searching a codebase, reading logs — and hands back only the summary. How they work, how to write your own, and the tasks where they help versus the ones where they just add cost.
Claude Code Slash Commands: The Ones Worth Knowing on Day One
Claude Code has dozens of built-in slash commands. The dozen a beginner actually needs — /init, /clear, /compact, /context, /usage, /model, /resume, /rewind, /plan, /diff, /permissions, /help — what each does, when to use it, and how to make your own.
Claude Code Skills: Turn the Prompts You Keep Retyping Into Commands
If you've pasted the same instructions into Claude Code more than twice, it should be a skill. How skills work, how they differ from CLAUDE.md, how to write one with arguments and live context, and four skills worth having in almost any project.
Claude Code Settings Explained: settings.json Scopes, Precedence, and a Team Setup
Claude Code reads settings from managed, command-line, local, project, and user files. Where each lives, which wins, how permission lists merge, what belongs in the committed project file vs your personal one, and a practical team configuration with permissions, hooks, and environment variables.
Claude Code Plan Mode: Make It Think Before It Types
The most expensive Claude Code mistakes happen in the first five minutes, when it confidently heads in the wrong direction. Plan mode makes it research and propose before touching anything. How to use it, how to review a plan properly, and when it's overkill.
Claude Code Permission Modes Explained: Manual, Accept Edits, Plan, and Auto
Claude Code can ask before every action, auto-approve edits, only plan, or run with a safety classifier reviewing each step. What each permission mode does, which one you start in, how to switch with Shift+Tab, allow and deny rules, and which mode to use when.
Connecting MCP Servers to Claude Code: Setup, Scopes, and the Security Question
MCP servers let Claude Code talk to your issue tracker, database, error monitoring, and docs. Adding one is a single command. Choosing which ones to trust is the harder part. How to connect them, where the configuration lives, and how to keep a useful integration from becoming a data leak.
Using Claude Code on a Large Codebase
On a big repository, Claude Code's quality depends on what's in its context. How to structure CLAUDE.md files across a monorepo, point it at the right code, delegate exploration to subagents, keep sessions focused, give it fast feedback loops, and plan multi-step changes that span many files.
Claude Code Hooks: Rules the Agent Can't Forget
CLAUDE.md tells Claude Code what you'd like. Hooks make it happen, every time — blocking edits to protected files, formatting after every change, refusing to stop while tests fail. Five practical hooks, how they work, and the honest limits of what a hook can enforce.
Running Claude Code Headless: claude -p in Scripts, Cron, and CI
Add -p and Claude Code stops being a chat and becomes a command: pipe input in, get text or JSON out, exit with a status code. How print mode works, how to control what it's allowed to do and spend, authentication for CI, and where headless runs still need somewhere to live.
How to Use Claude Code From Your Phone: Every Option Compared
You can check on — and steer — a Claude Code session from your phone in at least four different ways. They differ in where the code runs, what happens when your laptop sleeps, and how much you can actually do on a small screen.
Claude Code --dangerously-skip-permissions: When It's Safe, and What to Use Instead
An agent that stops to ask permission can't work while you're away. An agent that never asks can delete things. How Claude Code's permission modes and allow/deny rules work, when skipping prompts is reasonable, and what has to be true of the environment first.
Claude Code Checkpoints: How /rewind Works and What It Can't Undo
Press Esc twice and Claude Code rewinds its file edits to any earlier prompt. It's a genuine safety net — with holes shaped exactly like the mistakes that hurt most: shell commands, database changes, and anything outside the working tree. What's covered, what isn't, and what to use for the rest.