A practical Claude Code introduction for 2025: Beyond the hype

Kenneth Pangan
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Kenneth Pangan

Stanley Nicholas
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Stanley Nicholas

Last edited September 30, 2025

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You’ve probably seen the term "agentic AI" popping up everywhere lately. It’s a big deal because we’re shifting from AI that just chats with you to AI that can actually get things done. It can take a goal, figure out the steps, and then go and do them. Anthropic’s Claude Code is a huge name in this space, especially for anyone who writes software.

But here’s the thing: just because it’s powerful doesn’t mean it’s the right tool for every job. In this practical Claude Code introduction, we’ll dig into what it does, how it works, and honestly, where it isn’t the best fit. We’re going to look at why an AI built for developers is a completely different beast than one designed to help run your business.

What is Claude Code?

Claude Code comes from Anthropic, the same folks who made the Claude family of AI models you may have heard of. But this isn’t just another chatbot. It’s an agentic coding assistant that hangs out where developers spend their time, in the terminal or a code editor like VS Code.

A practical Claude Code introduction showing the tool in the command line.
A practical Claude Code introduction showing the tool in the command line.

This image shows a developer using the Claude Code introduction in a terminal, which is a key part of the user experience.

So, what’s "agentic coding" all about? The best way to think about it is comparing a smart calculator to a junior developer. A simple AI tool might finish a line of code for you, which is nice. But an agentic tool like Claude Code can take a request in plain English, like "clean up this file so it’s easier to read," come up with a plan, and then carry out that plan by reading, writing, and editing code across your entire project. As Anthropic puts it, it’s more of a collaborator than just a code-spitting machine.

Core capabilities for developers

The cool thing about Claude Code is that it helps with the entire development process, not just little bits and pieces. Since it can see the whole codebase at once, it can tackle tricky tasks that span multiple files, the kind of stuff that would leave simpler tools scratching their heads. It’s no wonder it’s becoming a go-to for handling some of the more tedious parts of coding.

Here are a few of the main ways developers are putting it to work:

  • Building features from the ground up: You can describe a new feature you want ("add a way for users to see their profile"), and Claude Code will sketch out a plan and get to work writing the code.

  • Hunting down bugs: Instead of losing hours trying to find a bug, you can just give it an error message or explain what’s going wrong. Claude will sift through the code to find the problem and suggest how to fix it.

  • Getting to know a new codebase: When you’re new to a project, you can ask it questions like, "How do we handle user logins in this app?" Claude will look through the code and give you a detailed answer that’s specific to that project.

  • The not-so-glamorous work: It can take over the boring but important jobs like making code more readable, adding comments, creating documentation, and fixing formatting issues.

A practical Claude Code introduction to its planning capabilities.
A practical Claude Code introduction to its planning capabilities.

This image from the Claude Code introduction shows its ‘plan mode,’ where it outlines the steps it will take to complete a coding task.

Its real strength is its ability to keep the entire project in its "mind" at once. One in-depth review mentioned that it handles complex requests really well and is great at finding its way around large codebases, which is a huge step up from tools that can only look at one file at a time.

The Claude Code experience: Setup, interface, and pricing

Claude Code is built to be used in a developer’s natural environment: the command line. This makes it a beast for its target audience, but it also means the user experience is a far cry from your average business app.

Your main way of interacting with Claude Code is through a terminal (that black screen with text) or a native VS Code extension. There’s no slick web dashboard here; you’re working with text commands. To even get started, you need a developer setup with Node.js installed, and then you can install it with a single command, as this handy tutorial shows.

Pricing explained

Claude Code isn’t a standalone product; its features are part of Anthropic’s main subscription plans for its Claude chatbot. There is a free version, but you’ll need to pay to get the power and usage limits you’d need for any serious coding work.

According to the official Claude pricing page, the individual plans look like this:

PlanPrice (Billed Monthly)Key Features for Claude Code
Free$0Limited use on the Sonnet model.
Pro$20More usage, access to all models (including the powerful Opus model), and access to Claude Code in the terminal.
MaxFrom $100Everything in Pro, plus way more usage (5x or 20x options), higher output limits, and priority access.
This video from Anthropic provides a great introduction to Claude Code's capabilities.

The limits of a developer-first approach

The command-line setup is fantastic for engineers who live in that world all day. For everyone else, though, it’s a huge hurdle. Your customer support, sales, or HR teams are not going to learn how to use a terminal just to automate a few tasks. It’s a tool made by developers, for developers.

This is a world away from a platform like eesel AI, which is built around a simple, self-serve dashboard that anyone can use. The whole philosophy is different. You don’t need to be a tech wizard; eesel AI lets anyone on the team build and manage AI agents for what they need, and you can often get started in minutes.

Limitations for business automation

Claude Code is a fantastic tool for making software. But the very things that make it great for coding are what make it the wrong tool for automating day-to-day business tasks. When you’re trying to help customers or make your internal teams more efficient, you need something more than a code writer.

It’s a coder, not a knowledge worker

The "knowledge" Claude Code uses is whatever codebase you give it. It understands Python and JavaScript, sure, but it can’t tap into all the different places your company’s real knowledge is stored. It has no way to learn from your old customer support tickets, check your internal wiki, or read through your help center.

This is the biggest difference with a tool built for business, like eesel AI. It’s made to connect all your company’s knowledge, no matter where it lives. It has easy integrations that hook right into your help desks like Zendesk and Intercom, your wikis like Confluence and Google Docs, and even your team chat in Slack. This means it can give answers based on your actual business, not just what’s in your code.

Its lack of business-specific skills and safeguards

The actions Claude Code can take are all for developers: "edit file", "run test", "commit code". It doesn’t have ready-made skills for common business needs like "figure out what this support ticket is about," "check a customer’s order in Shopify," or "send this problem to the right person." You could build those things, but it would take a lot of ongoing work from your developers.

On the other hand, eesel AI is designed with a customizable workflow engine for business teams. You can set up different AI personas, create very specific rules so it only handles certain kinds of tickets, and build custom actions that plug into your internal tools. This gives you complete control to make sure the automation works exactly the way your business needs it to, safely and predictably.

The right AI agent for the job: eesel AI for business workflows

Look, this isn’t a "which AI is better?" debate. It’s about picking the right tool for the job. You use a hammer for a nail and a screwdriver for a screw. Claude Code is the tool developers use to build the product. eesel AI is the tool the rest of the business uses to support that product and the people who use it.

It fills the gaps that developer-first tools leave behind by offering a platform for business automation that’s easy to use, powerful, and safe. The differences are pretty clear:

  • Get going in minutes: With one-click integrations for your help desk and a setup process that doesn’t require a developer, your support team can build and manage their own AI agent.

  • Test it safely: Before you let an AI talk to a single real customer, you’d want to know how it’ll behave, right? eesel AI has a simulation mode that lets you test it on thousands of your past support tickets. You can see exactly how it would have answered, get a good idea of its resolution rate, and tweak its behavior without any risk.

Claude Code is for writing software. eesel AI is for running the business that software powers.

The future is agentic

Claude Code makes one thing perfectly clear: agentic AI isn’t just a cool concept anymore. It’s here, and it’s ready for serious work. For software development, it’s automating things we couldn’t have imagined a few years back.

But what its success also shows is that we’re not heading for a future with one single AI that does everything. It’s about having a team of specialized AIs, each one an expert at its specific job. You need tools for developers to solve developer problems, and you need business automation platforms to solve business problems.

If you’re thinking about bringing AI agents into your customer support, ITSM, or internal help desk, a tool built for that exact purpose is your fastest and best bet. Take a look at how eesel AI offers a simple, controllable, and powerful solution designed for your business.

Frequently asked questions

A Claude Code introduction reveals it’s primarily an agentic coding assistant designed by Anthropic for software developers. Its main purpose is to help build, debug, and maintain software projects by interacting directly with codebases.

A Claude Code introduction explains that it’s used in a developer’s natural environment, like the command line or a VS Code extension. Setup requires a developer environment with Node.js, and interaction is primarily through text commands, without a web dashboard.

Yes, a Claude Code introduction highlights capabilities like building features from scratch, hunting bugs across multiple files, exploring new codebases, and automating tedious tasks like adding comments or documentation. It processes the entire project, not just isolated parts.

A Claude Code introduction notes it’s a coder, not a knowledge worker, meaning it can’t tap into diverse company knowledge bases like support tickets or internal wikis. It also lacks ready-made business-specific skills or safeguards for tasks like checking customer orders or managing support workflows.

A Claude Code introduction states that it’s part of Anthropic’s main Claude chatbot subscription plans. While there’s a free tier with limited use, serious coding work typically requires a paid plan like the Pro or Max tiers to access full capabilities and higher usage limits.

A Claude Code introduction clarifies it’s a tool for developers to build software, while platforms like eesel AI are designed for the rest of the business to support that product. eesel AI focuses on easy-to-use dashboards, connecting diverse company knowledge, and business-specific workflows, unlike Claude Code’s developer-centric approach.

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Kenneth Pangan

Writer and marketer for over ten years, Kenneth Pangan splits his time between history, politics, and art with plenty of interruptions from his dogs demanding attention.