Claude Code, explained: why this AI tool has tech people freaking out

If it feels like the tech people in your life and on your timeline have collectively lost their minds – more than usual – then that's just Claude Code's experience at work.

If you know what I'm talking about, then you do too Vibe coding So hard that you're about to dissolve into digital delight, or you're sweating cold and composing your email “I for one salute our AI overlords.”

But if you think Claude Code sounds like a New York Times pun you haven't tried yet, then this FAQ is for you.

Okay, so what is this?

Right, do you know how chatbots…chat? As in: write to you, talk to you, write your coursework? Claude code that comes from the AI company Anthropicis an AI tool that can actually do things with your computer. Actually, many of the things what you can do with your computer. (Well, not you, if you're the target audience for this FAQ, but someone who is an experienced programmer who never sleeps, never says no, and works at impressive speed.)

What things do you like?

Honestly, it would be easier to list the things a computer can't do. But an incomplete overview of what users have achieved with Claude Code would include: a Spotify Wrapped program but for text messages; personalized daily letters which include emails, newsletters and more; A Pokémon card management system; A Personal DNA Analyzer; and a “Cyberpunk” Tetris game. You need at least one $20 per month Claude Pro account – no freebies for you.

…Cool? But the name has “code” in it – do I need to know anything about programming?

No worries! Yes, Claude Code is designed to work in what's called a “command line interface,” which is the part of your computer where, instead of clicking on icons or typing normal sentences, you type commands using a programming language into a terminal, which is the black screen where nerds type their code.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! Do I look like Angelina Jolie in the movie from 1995? hacker? I don't know what it all means.

It's okay – me neither!

It's true that experienced programmers can get the most out of Claude Code (although they're the ones going through it too deepest existential crises). But the learning curve for using Claude Code decreases faster than a Six Flags roller coaster ride, and you can increasingly interact with Claude Code more or less the way you would a chatbot if you wanted to – using plain English and relatively few commands. Be warned, it's more cumbersome than using it in the terminal, but honestly I wouldn't trust any of us with that.

The bottom line is that the process works like this:

In the best case, it closes the loop, usually on its own: plan → change → check → repair. This is why people who make a living developing software behave as if they have been freed from a thousand tiny paper cuts.

But I want to keep my files. Ideally, all of them. In their current state of existence.

Smart person. Claude Code is agentic, meaning he can perform tasks with little or no supervision, and as every manager knows, the advantages of being an agent (“he can act autonomously!”) are also the disadvantages of being an agent (“oh no, he just acted autonomously!”).

So when you start playing around with this, make your instructions very, very clear – for example: “Don't delete anything. I really mean that.” (Fortunately, Claude Code still defaults to patting you on the back before something irreversible happens.) It's like parenting a five-year-old with superpowers.

Also, keep backups of all important data. But obviously you already do that.

Uh, sure… moving forward, I understand why this is such a big deal for programmers. But does it really matter to the rest of us?

Surely! As Future Perfect editor Dylan Matthews wrote last year – to borrow a phrase from AI author/investor Leopold Aschenbrenner – the scary end game is “drop-in remote workers.”

In simple terms, this means that as a remote worker, you probably perform most of your tasks on a computer. The way I feel right now. And while I may not think of myself as someone who manipulates computer code in my work, under the hood that's exactly what happens with every letter I press in this document.

Large language models – especially models with complex reasoning like Claude's Opus 4.5, the model of choice for demanding Claude code work – are already very good at reasoning, analyzing, and writing, and are likely to get even better.

Claude Code is what happens when you take a language model and give it tool access – file editing, searching, executing commands – within your codebase, with guardrails you can relax (or, unfortunately, remove). In other words, if you're a remote worker, Claude Code could potentially pop in and do some, most, or maybe even all of the work. If chatbots really could do that adviseModels like Claude Code can actually do it Do.

And Anthropic is already trying to bring that same “Claude with hands” feeling from the programming cave to the rest of your digital life. That's the idea behind it just released Claude Cowork: Instead of pointing Claude to a code base, point him to a regular people folder – your notes, documents, spreadsheets, PDFs, screenshots, the junk drawer of modern work – and he can read, organize, extract and draft from that area to produce real results, not just suggestions.

If Claude Code is a drop-in remote worker for software teams, Cowork is the version that can jump into the work that most remote workers actually do: turning messy input into usable output faster than you can say “sorry, I'll get back.”

Yes, now you might understand why Anthropic boss Dario Amodei warned that we could be “sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath,” with AI quickly eliminating large numbers of entry-level jobs.

Have you tried Claude Cowork?

No – Cowork currently requires at least a $100 per month Max account, and of course I need to save for the post-work apocalypse.

Wait, shouldn't that be you? Good news, man?

That's actually me! (Sign up for the newsletter Here.) And if you squint, you can argue that what we're likely to see is less about replacing human jobs and more about reorganizing them, turning workers into managers of teams of future AI agents responsible for setting goals, verifying results, and making decisions. I think in this more optimistic future we will all be like that Office space'S Bill Lumberghand directs our army of AI agents to fill infinity TPS reports.

Oh brave new world in which such agents exist!

Yeah, I think the only thing we can count on is that it's going to be weird. I mean, weirder.

But in the meantime, you can really improve your work and even your life significantly if you start playing around with these tools, unless you're planning on sabotaging data centers – please don't do that. The first time you actually create something that works is a pretty powerful feeling. I imagine how Mickey felt halfway The sorcerer's apprentice.

Do you know how that ended?

And they all lived happily everafter.

(Disclosure: Future Perfect is partially funded by the BEMC Foundation, whose primary funder was also an early investor in Anthropic; they have no editorial influence over our content.)