I used to be a coder 👨‍💻. Every day I would pop up my IDEs (yes, plural) and happily bust some code. Life was good ✨. But, then LLMs arrived and the world has changed 🌍. I am no longer a coder. I am a Clauder 🤖!

I’ll tell you where I am coming from, where I’m at right now and where I plan to go 🚀.

“AI will change the nature of creativity, so we must develop new ways to interact with these machines.” ~ Yves Behar

💻 The Beginning 💻

First, it wasn’t much more than a fancy code completion ⌨️. If I asked the AI to do something a little bit more complicated it would fail hilariously 😅. I would shake my head and fix it 🔧. Then, it got better and better…

Initially, I’ve used mostly GitHub Copilot in JetBrains IDE 🛠️. But, I didn’t like the code completion mode of operation. I wanted an autonomous AI engineer 🤖. I started using Devin from Cognition. That was a much better experience ⭐. Devin could understand the context of the project and take on relatively large tasks across the entire codebase 📚. It also operated in its own environment, cloning the repo 🌿 and I could work on something else locally with no conflicts. But, something was still missing. Enter Claude Code 🎯.

🤖 How I Learned to Relax and Love the Claude 🤖

Claude Code lives in your terminal 💻. It changes your code directly, and it can of course chat with you 💬, plan 📋, test 🧪, commit and push. I typically let Claude handle all the code, but I take care of commits and pushes as human quality control ✅.

If I want to change something manually, I just do it ✏️. No need to keep pulling from a remote branch somewhere.

The most important benefit for me is that Claude code can access any command-line tool I have installed 🔧. It can help me with infra tasks on Kubernetes ☸️, AWS ☁️ and access any system I can.

These days I don’t write code myself, I don’t troubleshoot myself, I don’t even design myself. I provide a spark to Claude ⚡ and I keep it on track 🎯. I gently nudge it when it goes off the rails 🛤️.

🎮 Get in the game 🎮

If you’re not using an AI coding agent yet, you’re already behind ⚠️. You better catch up quick 🏃. You don’t have to use Claude code, but you have to use something. Pick your poison ☠️: Claude code, OpenAI codex, Gemini CLI, Devin or something else.

If you’re in AI coding assistant camp, Cursor, Windsurf or Google’s Antigravity may be your jam 🎸.

OK. Let’s take a quick look at Claude code and what it can do for you 👀.

🟧 Claude Code World 🟧

This is going to be just a quick overview of Claude code features ⚡. In future blogs I’ll dive in deeper into each feature and cover it in depth 🔍.

Claude code has several key features that make it stand out ⭐:

• Memory system: CLAUDE.md files that provide persistent context across sessions.
• Slash commands: Powerful slash commands to control its behavior, and you can write custom slash commands.
• Subagents: Create specialized subagents for different tasks with their own context window.
• Skills: Reusable skills that can be invoked automatically by Claude or subagents.
• MCP Support: Extend it with any MCP tool to access APIs, databases and other external systems.
• GitHub Integration: Deep integration with GitHub for PR reviews, issue management and even CI/CD.
• Hooks: Activate agentic workflows automatically triggered by events
• Plugins: Bundle hooks, slash commands and skills into plugins you can share with other people
• Claude Agent SDK: Build agentic AI systems beyond coding assistance

👤 Next Steps for Me 👤

I plan to double down on Claude code 💪. I want to integrate via CLI tools or MCP servers with ALL the systems I use 🔗. I want to run multiple sessions in parallel 🎛️, get notified whenever Claude needs my input 📬 and provide the final thumbs up 👍. I want to take advantage of all the advanced features like hooks 🪝 and plugins 🧩 to automate as much as possible 🤖.

🏠 Take Home Points 🏠

• 🤖 Coding has been automated (even if it’s not 100% yet, the models improve fast)
• 🚀 AI coding agents are the new normal
• 💻 Claude code is a powerful AI coding agent that runs in your terminal
• ✨ Embrace the change and start using an AI coding agent today!

Until next time, happy coding (or Clauding) 👨‍💻!