Vibe Coding

Claude Code

Meet your AI coding partner

Sooner or later, copying code out of a chat window gets slow. A coding agent fixes that: it works inside your project and builds things directly. In this section you'll meet one of the most popular coding agents, Claude Code.

What is Claude Code?

Imagine two kinds of helpers. One is a friend on the phone who tells you how to fix a shelf. The other is a carpenter standing in your room with tools in hand.

A chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude in the browser is the friend on the phone. Claude Code is the carpenter. It is an AI coding agent: an AI that can take actions on your computer, not just talk.

Claude Code can:

Read your files to understand your project before it changes anything
Edit and create files directly, so you never copy and paste code
Run commands like starting your app or saving a Git commit
Ask your permission first before it edits files or runs commands

Chatbot vs coding agent

You may already use chatbots to plan and build small apps. Here is how Claude Code is different.

Feature	Chatbot in the browser	Claude Code
Sees your project files	No	Yes
Writes code for you	Yes	Yes
Saves the code into files	You copy and paste	It edits the files
Runs your app and commands	No	Yes, with your OK
Remembers project rules	Only in that chat	Yes, with CLAUDE.md

A chatbot gives you code to copy. A coding agent works inside your project folder.

Where Claude Code runs

Claude Code mainly runs in the terminal. The terminal is a text window where you type commands to your computer. Don't worry if you have never used one. You only need a few commands, and we show every one.

You can also use Claude Code inside VS Code and in a desktop app. In this guide we run it in the terminal and keep VS Code open next to it, so you can watch files appear and change.