Guides

A plain-English guide for complete beginners. What Claude Code is, what people genuinely build with it, whether you need to know how to code, and how to get it running without touching a command line.

A real first-day setup for Claude Code that goes beyond install. What to set up, what to skip, how to think about the first session, and the things most people miss in week one.

Which terminal to use on macOS, the Option-key problem nobody warns you about, how to wire up notifications, and the other small settings that make Claude Code feel like it was built for your machine rather than just running on it.

Installing Claude Code on Ubuntu, Debian, and Alpine with the native installer or Anthropic's signed apt, dnf, and apk repos, keeping it updated, fixing the PATH, and the Linux errors people actually hit.

Native Windows is genuinely supported now and you don't need WSL the way you used to. The honest guide to picking PowerShell or WSL2, what Git for Windows changes, the install pitfalls that catch people, and the small terminal settings that matter.

The Claude Code desktop app and the terminal CLI run the same engine and share your setup. Here's what only one of them can do, how to move a session between them, and how Remote Control lets you drive either from your phone.

Installing the Claude Code extension in VS Code or Cursor, the PATH gotcha that confuses almost everyone, reviewing changes as diffs, rewinding, permission modes, and when to switch to the terminal.

The handful of workflow features that actually change how much you get out of Claude Code, why most users discover them too late, and the patterns Anthropic's own teams use to keep sessions productive across long tasks.

What each Claude Code effort level actually changes, the default on each model, how to set it and how long the setting lasts, and why ultrathink and ultracode are two different things.

Claude Code saves a checkpoint before every prompt, and /rewind or Esc twice takes you back. What checkpoints restore, what they miss, like changes made by Bash commands, and how to use git and plan mode so a bad turn never costs you work.

Claude Code commits, branches, and opens pull requests with the same git you already use. What it does on its own, what /rewind can and can't undo, and the few settings worth changing.

Run Claude Code on the server, connect to it from the desktop app's SSH sessions, or drive it from your own machine with ssh commands. How each one works, what each needs, and the mistakes that cost the most time.

CLAUDE.md is the single highest-leverage file in a Claude Code project, and most people write it badly. The honest guide to what belongs in it, where it lives, how the new auto memory system works alongside it, and the mistakes that quietly hurt response quality.

Start a Claude Code session on your computer and keep working on it from the Claude app on your phone or claude.ai/code. What you need, the three ways to start it, what happens when your computer sleeps, and what to do when Dispatch says your desktop is asleep.

The configuration surface that turns Claude Code from a useful default into a tool genuinely shaped to your workflow. Settings files, the permission rule system, when to use hooks vs CLAUDE.md vs skills, and the patterns that survive long-term.

Every file Claude Code and the Claude desktop app write to your computer: settings, CLAUDE.md, session transcripts, memory, checkpoints, desktop logs, and claude_desktop_config.json, on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Plus how long history is kept and how to clean it up safely.

The two main ways to extend Claude Code are skills (custom slash commands you write in markdown) and MCP servers (external services that expose tools to the model). Most users discover these too late. Here's the honest guide to when to reach for each.

Everything you do in the interactive terminal, Claude Code can also do unattended. Three ways to run it in a pipeline: the headless CLI (claude -p), the Agent SDK, and the official GitHub Action. Same engine, three entry points, one set of cost and permission rules to get right.