Claude Code
What it is: Anthropic's AI assistant with exceptional long-context understanding. Excels at analyzing and refactoring large codebases.
What It Does Best
Massive context window. Handle entire files or multiple files at once. Understands relationships across large codebases better than competitors.
Thoughtful responses. Takes time to reason through problems. More careful with edge cases and potential issues than faster models.
Code understanding. Exceptional at explaining complex code, architectural decisions, and system design. Great teaching tool.
Key Features
200K context window: Process entire codebases in one conversation
Code generation: Write high-quality code across many languages
Artifacts: Preview generated code, documents, and diagrams
Chain of thought: Shows reasoning process for complex problems
Safe outputs: Constitutional AI reduces harmful or buggy code
Pricing
Free: Limited usage of Claude 3.5 Sonnet
Pro: $20/month (5x more usage, priority access)
Team: $25/user/month (collaboration features)
API: Pay-per-use pricing for developers
When to Use It
✅ Need to analyze large files or entire projects
✅ Complex refactoring across multiple files
✅ Understanding unfamiliar legacy code
✅ Want careful, well-reasoned code suggestions
✅ Prefer safety and accuracy over speed
When NOT to Use It
❌ Need IDE integration (no native plugin yet)
❌ Want real-time autocomplete (use Copilot)
❌ Prefer web search capabilities (use Perplexity)
❌ Need specialized AWS knowledge (use Amazon Q)
❌ Want completely free unlimited usage
Common Use Cases
Codebase analysis: Understand architecture of unfamiliar projects
Refactoring: Safely restructure code across multiple files
Code review: Deep analysis of pull requests and changes
Documentation: Generate comprehensive docs from code
Debugging: Trace complex bugs through call stacks
Claude vs Alternatives
vs ChatGPT: Claude has larger context, ChatGPT has more features
vs GitHub Copilot: Claude for analysis, Copilot for autocomplete
vs Cursor: Cursor integrates Claude into full IDE
Unique Strengths
Context length: Largest context window of major AI assistants
Code safety: More cautious about security and correctness
Reasoning: Excellent at explaining "why" not just "how"
Artifacts: Interactive preview of generated code and diagrams
Bottom line: Best for understanding and refactoring large codebases. Long context window is game-changing. Not as fast as ChatGPT but more thoughtful. No native IDE plugin yet, but can use via Cursor or Continue.