Software development is about to get more conversational. Anthropic recently launched Claude Code, an agentic command line tool that lets developers delegate coding tasks directly to Claude from their terminal. It’s currently available in research preview, giving developers an early look at what happens when advanced AI capabilities meet the command line interface.
At its core, Claude Code is designed to handle the kind of work that developers do every day but would rather not spend hours on. Instead of context-switching between your editor, documentation, and various tools, you can describe what you want to accomplish and let Claude Code figure out the implementation details. It’s not just about generating code snippets; the tool can understand your project structure, make decisions about how to implement features, and even interact with your development environment to test and refine its work.
What makes Claude Code particularly interesting is its agentic nature. Unlike traditional coding assistants that wait for you to prompt them at every step, Claude Code can take initiative. Give it a goal like “add user authentication to this web app” or “optimize these database queries,” and it can break down the task, explore your codebase to understand the context, write the necessary code, and verify that everything works as intended. It operates with a degree of autonomy that feels less like using a tool and more like collaborating with a junior developer who happens to work very quickly.
The command line interface is deliberate. Developers already live in their terminals, and Claude Code integrates into that existing workflow rather than requiring you to adopt a completely new environment. You can invoke it while you’re in the middle of debugging, ask it to implement a feature while you’re working on something else, or have it handle refactoring tasks that you’ve been putting off. The terminal-native approach means it fits naturally into the scripts, automation, and processes that developers have already built.
Being in research preview means Claude Code is still evolving. Anthropic is gathering feedback from early users to understand how developers actually want to work with AI assistants at the command line, what tasks it handles well, and where it needs improvement. This preview phase is as much about learning how developers integrate AI into their workflow as it is about refining the tool’s capabilities.
For developers curious about where AI-assisted coding is heading, Claude Code represents a shift toward more autonomous, context-aware tools that can handle entire tasks rather than just completing lines of code. It’s powered by Claude Sonnet 4, which you can also access through the model string ‘claude-sonnet-4-20250514’ if you’re working with Anthropic’s API directly.
If you want to try Claude Code yourself or learn more about its capabilities, Anthropic has published details on their blog where you can find information about joining the research preview and getting started. As with any preview release, expect rough edges and ongoing improvements, but also get a glimpse of how the relationship between developers and AI assistants might continue to evolve.
