Anthropic's agentic coding tool combining autonomous planning, execution, and validation with extensibility through skills, plugins, MCP servers, and hooks.
Core Concepts
Subagents: Specialized agents (planner, code-reviewer, tester, debugger, docs-manager, ui-ux-designer, database-admin)
Agent Skills: Modular capabilities with SKILL.md + bundled resources (scripts, references, assets) loaded progressively
Slash Commands: User-defined operations in .claude/commands/ expanding to prompts
Hooks: Event-driven shell commands (SessionStart, PreToolUse, PostToolUse, Stop, SubagentStop)
MCP Servers: Model Context Protocol integrations for external tools (GitHub, Jira, databases)
Plugins: Packaged collections distributed via marketplace
Reference Guide
Load references as needed for specific topics:
| Topic | Reference File | Contents |
|---|---|---|
| Installation & setup | references/getting-started.md |
Prerequisites, installation methods, authentication |
| Slash commands | references/slash-commands.md |
Full catalog: /cook, /plan, /fix, /test, /docs, /git, /design |
| Workflow examples | references/common-workflows.md |
Feature implementation, bug fixing, testing, git ops |
| Creating skills | references/agent-skills.md |
Skill structure, metadata, bundled resources |
| MCP servers | references/mcp-integration.md |
Configuration, common servers, authentication |
| Hooks system | references/hooks-comprehensive.md |
Event types, command/prompt hooks, tool matchers |
| Plugins | references/hooks-and-plugins.md |
Plugin structure, marketplace, installation |
| Configuration | references/configuration.md |
Settings hierarchy, model config, output styles |
| Enterprise | references/enterprise-features.md |
SSO, RBAC, sandboxing, audit logging, deployment |
| IDE integration | references/ide-integration.md |
VS Code extension, JetBrains plugin |
| CI/CD | references/cicd-integration.md |
GitHub Actions, GitLab workflows |
| Advanced features | references/advanced-features.md |
Extended thinking, caching, checkpointing |
| Troubleshooting | references/troubleshooting.md |
Auth failures, MCP issues, performance, debug mode |
| API reference | references/api-reference.md |
Admin, Messages, Files, Models, Skills APIs |
| Best practices | references/best-practices.md |
Project organization, security, performance, cost |
Instructions
When answering questions:
- Identify topic from user query
- Load relevant reference files (use table above)
- Provide specific guidance with examples
- For complex queries, load multiple references
Documentation sources:
- Context7 llms.txt:
https://context7.com/websites/claude_en_claude-code/llms.txt?tokens=10000 - Topic search:
https://context7.com/websites/claude_en_claude-code/llms.txt?topic=<topic>&tokens=5000 - Official docs: https://docs.claude.com/en/docs/claude-code/
- GitHub: https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code
- Support: support.claude.com