Stage 1 · Lesson 6 of 6
What Claude Code is
is 's . It runs in your terminal and also inside , IDEs, the Claude desktop app and the browser. You start it in a project folder, describe what you want, and it reads files, edits them and runs commands you allow, showing each step.
It is agent-first: rather than suggesting lines as you type, it works on whole tasks while you steer, review and approve. That makes planning, verification and permissions the core skills, which is what this roadmap builds. Most ways of using it need a paid Claude plan or an API key, so check what your account includes.
Common trapusing it like a chat window, pasting code in and out, instead of letting it read the real files and run your tests.
A question to check yourself, an AI practice session and 1 cheat sheet entry come when you add the roadmap to your account. Add it
Resources for this stage
Start with· follow one of these
- VideoFreeDeep Dive into Large Language Models like ChatGPT
Andrej Karpathy · Intermediate
A clear, free explanation of how language models are trained and why they hallucinate; watch the first hour
- CourseFreeClaude Code 101
Anthropic · Beginner
Anthropic's free starter course: what an agent is, the agentic loop, context and permissions