What is Claude?
Claude is a family of large language models built by Anthropic with a focus on safety, helpfulness, and honesty. For most users, the fastest way to start is directly inside your IDE — no setup required beyond installing the extension.
Safety-First Design
Anthropic builds Claude using Constitutional AI (CAI). Claude is trained to be helpful, harmless, and honest — and these constraints hold across all interfaces, including Claude Code in VS Code.
Works Where You Work
Claude is available via Claude.ai in the browser, the Claude Code extension in VS Code and JetBrains, the desktop app, and the Anthropic API. This track focuses on the IDE experience.
200K Token Context
All Claude 4 models support up to 200,000 tokens — roughly 150,000 words. You can feed entire codebases, documents, or email threads into a single conversation.
Agentic by Default
Claude Code can read files, write code, run terminal commands, search the web, and complete multi-step tasks — all from a chat panel inside VS Code, no Python script required.
Getting Started: Claude Code in VS Code
Install the Extension
Open VS Code → Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X) → search Claude Code → Install. Sign in with your Anthropic or Claude.ai account. No API key needed for claude.ai subscribers.
Open the Chat Panel
Click the Claude icon in the Activity Bar (left sidebar) or press Ctrl+Shift+C. The chat panel opens on the right. Type your first message — Claude can already see your open workspace.
Add Context with @
Type @filename to attach a specific file, or @folder to add a whole directory. Claude reads the content and can answer questions, suggest edits, or generate new code against it.
Apply Edits Inline
When Claude suggests a code change, a diff view appears. Click Accept to apply it directly to your file — no copy-pasting. Click Reject to discard.
Run Terminal Commands
Ask Claude to run commands: "run the tests" or "install the dependencies". Claude opens a terminal, executes the command, reads the output, and reports back — or fixes errors automatically.
If your team needs to integrate Claude into a custom app or automate calls programmatically, see Module 19: API Usage. This track (Modules 07–24) focuses on day-to-day IDE use — no coding required.