Stop Typing, Start Commanding: A Practical Guide to Claude Code

You've probably felt the buzz online. The team at Anthropic recently released something truly game-changing, and it's now available to everyone: Claude Code.

As its creators put it, it’s a fully "agentic" partner meant for building entire features, writing complete functions, and fixing complex bugs.

It’s also designed to fit into your workflow. It works with any IDE (VS Code, JetBrains, Xcode), in any terminal, whether you're working locally, over SSH, or even in tmux.

So, how do you go from hearing about it to actually using it effectively? This is your practical guide to take you from initial setup to pro-level user, using the most effective techniques discovered by its earliest adopters.

Your Starting Point: Ask It Anything

First things first, getting started is a single line in your terminal. All you need is Node.js installed.

npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

Once it's installed, your first and most important step isn't to give it a huge task. It's to: start by asking questions.

At Anthropic, this approach has transformed their technical onboarding for new engineers, cutting it down from two or three weeks to just two or three days. Your code stays private and local, and you can get started instantly.

Treat it like a senior engineer who knows the entire history of the project.

From Questions to Commands

Once you’re comfortable asking questions, you can start giving directions. But for big tasks, don't just ask for a giant feature all at once. The experts recommend a smarter approach:

1. Ask for a Plan First: Treat it like a real teammate. Say, "Before you write code, make a plan for this feature and run it by me for approval." This ensures you get exactly the result you want.

2. Use Powerful Shortcuts: For common workflows, you can use incredibly concise commands.

The Pro-Move: Create a Feedback Loop

This is one of the most powerful concepts for getting near-perfect results. The idea is to give Claude a way to check its own work so it can iterate and improve.

When Claude can see the results of its own code, it can correct its own mistakes without you needing to intervene on every little detail.

Imagine you give Claude a design mock of a web UI. If you also give it access to a screenshot tool like Puppeteer, it can:

1. Write the first version of the code.

2. Take a screenshot of the result.

3. Compare the screenshot to the mock.

4. Identify the differences and rewrite the code to be more accurate.

After iterating two or three times, the result is often almost perfect. This works for anything where Claude can get feedback, like running unit tests until they pass.

Your Secret Weapon: The Claude.md File

To make Claude truly intelligent about your specific project, you can create a special file named Claude.md in your project's main folder. Think of this as a "cheat sheet" that gives Claude critical context.

When you share this file with your team, everyone instantly gets a smarter, more fine-tuned assistant.

What to put in your Claude.md:

• Common bash commands your team uses.

• A brief style guide for writing code.

• A list of the core, most important files in the project.

• Key architectural decisions.

One Last Quick Tip

No matter what Claude is doing—even if it's in the middle of writing a file—you can always hit the Escape key to safely stop it, give it new instructions, and have it try again.

The best way to learn is to start. Pick one of these examples and try it on your own project today.