Claude Code

Claude Code is Anthropic’s agentic coding tool. Anthropic describes it as a tool that “understands your codebase, edits files, runs commands, and helps you ship faster.” A developer hands it a task, from a bug fix or a test to a multi-day migration, and steers and reviews the work while the agent reads and searches code, edits files, runs tests and command-line tools, and pushes commits or opens pull requests.

Anthropic introduced Claude Code on 24 February 2025 as a limited research preview alongside Claude 3.7 Sonnet, initially as a terminal-only tool. It has since expanded to native extensions for VS Code and JetBrains IDEs, a web version at claude.ai/code, the Claude desktop app, iOS and Android apps, and integrations with GitHub and Slack. By February 2026 Anthropic reported that Claude Code had passed $2.5 billion in run-rate revenue.

The tool is aimed at individual developers, teams and enterprises, with a separate Claude Code for Enterprise offering. Its key capabilities include mapping and explaining a whole codebase through agentic search rather than hand-picked context files; running long tasks that follow imports across a repository and continue when something breaks; working on several tasks in parallel while flagging decisions for the user; and extending itself with command-line tools and Model Context Protocol servers. It asks permission before changing files or running commands.

Claude Code runs on Anthropic’s Claude models and is included with Claude Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise subscriptions, or billed at API rates through a Claude Console account. Details of plans and usage limits are on the Claude pricing page.