A Deep Dive into Claude Code: The Ultimate AI Agent for Development |

Claude Code is not only one of the most powerful coding agents in the world, but it's also a highly capable all-purpose agent that can control your computer through the terminal. You can conduct research, build websites, create web apps, develop mobile apps, and even automate many parts of your business. So, in this article, we are going to do a complete deep dive into Claude Code. We're going to first install it, then use it to create some basic files, conduct research, and generate content. We're also going to create a landing page and a web app, and then we'll add authentication and a database to that web app, as well as a few AI features. You don't need to have any coding experience to use this powerful AI agent. Let's just dive in.

Getting Started with Claude Code

The first thing you'll need to do is download and install NodeJS if you haven't already. You can find the download for your operating system on the official NodeJS website. Simply follow the installation instructions.

Next, you will install the Claude Code package using a command provided in the official documentation. After installation, you'll be prompted to log in with your Claude monthly account. Once you have Claude on your computer, you can open a new terminal and type claude at any time and press enter to start.

This is Claude Code, running directly in your terminal. It is a Command Line Interface (CLI) and arguably the best AI coding tool available. We're going to cover everything from the basics to advanced usage.

Understanding the Fundamentals

Before we build anything, let's quickly cover some basic concepts:

What is a CLI? A Command Line Interface is a text-based interface used to run programs, manage computer files, and interact with the system.
What is a Terminal? The terminal is the program that you use to interact with the CLI.
What is a Directory? In the context of development, a folder is referred to as a directory.

A Practical Example: Your First AI Agent

A CLI is exactly what we're using right now. It's a command line interface, and I'm just going to show you what it does. Here, we can say:

create a folder in my downloads folder call it project one

This command gives Claude control over the computer's files. You'll see it has created a "project one" folder in the specified location. Now, let's navigate into it and create a file:

I'm going to click into this project one folder. Now we're in this project one folder. Please create a text file that says hi.

After giving approval, a new text file appears that simply says "hi." This is one of the reasons it feels like an agent; it can actually create things.

Let's try something more complex. We can instruct it to set up a content creation workflow:

create three folders one for ideas, one for examples, one for final drafts in the ideas folder. This is where I'll put simple text files for my ideas or any type of file for my ideas. And so I want you to put three sample ideas, very small text files in there. And for the examples, what this is going to do is this is going to be a place where you're always whenever you're tasked to create content, you're basically going to take my ideas, look at highquality examples. You're going to do whatever research you need to do to create a final draft about the topic of my idea, but in the style and tone of my examples. Don't create any examples or final drafts. Right now, what I want you to do is create a readme file that you can read to always anytime you get asked to create content. I want this to be something that you read every time so that we can keep this consistent.

This agent now has access to three different folders: ideas, examples, and final drafts. It will move content from idea to example to final draft. After granting permissions, it creates three sample ideas in the ideas folder, such as "productivity tips" and "common challenges with people face working from home." It also creates a readme.md file with the instructions we provided.

Integrating with a Note-Taking App

What's really cool is integrating this with a tool like Obsidian. Obsidian is a free, local note-taking app that's like an IDE for writing. We can create a new "vault" (which is just a folder) in Obsidian and then use Claude Code to move our project files into it.

please move everything that's in project one in that folder into Riley's notes which is also in the downloads folder. I just created it. Just move everything there and convert everything into a markdown file.

This command moves all the files and converts them to markdown, making them beautifully organized within Obsidian. Now we have an AI agent that can write directly in our note-taking app, which is incredibly useful. The notes appear in Obsidian, including the ideas, the empty final drafts and examples folders, and the readme.md file.

We can continue to refine this agent. For instance, we can add example outlines to the examples folder so the AI understands the desired format for new content. If we come across an interesting article or idea online, we can clip it and save it to a clippings folder, then instruct Claude to treat that folder as its source for new ideas.

Okay, combine the ideas folder and the clippings folder. I want you to combine these and make it called clippings. Just use that with the capital C clippings and then change the read me to update all mentions of the ideas. should just be called clippings.

Now, we can ask the agent to create content based on our saved clippings:

I want you to create a article on comet/plexity. This is a long form outline. Please create it using the ideas that I've saved.

The agent will first read the readme.md to understand the workflow, review the clippings for relevant ideas, study the examples to match the style, and then generate the final draft. It's a literal agent, going through a to-do list as if it were a personal research assistant. The result is a perfectly formatted outline in the final drafts folder, ready for further development.

Because we're staying organized with clear folders and a detailed readme, we're creating an agent that performs predictably yet remains flexible. It's not a rigid automation; it's an agent that can be told what to do. Later, we'll explore "plan mode," which allows us to review and approve the agent's plan before it executes.

Building Web Applications

Now, let's move from a general agent to a development workflow. We'll build a landing page, then a more complex web app with a database and AI features.

First, clear the current context in the terminal by typing /clear. This frees up the context from the previous session.

A helpful trick is to open the terminal directly within your project folder. This ensures Claude knows exactly where to put the files without needing explicit path instructions. You can often do this by right-clicking a folder and selecting "New Terminal at Folder."

For more advanced use, you can run Claude with a flag to bypass permission checks, which can speed up development, though it should be used with caution.

claude --dangerously-skip-permissions

Now, let's create a landing page.

search the internet, find out about Riley Brown, Riley Brown AI, and I want you to create a landing page for him, almost like a link in bio, but with no like components or squares or rectangles around anything. I want this to look like a document, except I want you to make the headings for this or like the links that should take me to a new page. You're going to create many new pages here. So, this means you're going to need to do research on him. And I want you to find out about all about him, his articles specifically, and his company. And I want you to make the headings just underlined. And when I hover over those underlines, it should like highlight it really quickly back and forth that it make it like look really cool when I hover over it so that you clearly know it is a button. And when I press it, have a cool animation that takes me to that next page. And again, this is hyper minimalist, right? creating this landing page and with all these other files and then I want you to run it locally so I can use it in my browser.

After a few moments, the files for the landing page will appear in your project directory. Claude will provide a local server address (e.g., http://localhost:8080) to view the site. The result is a minimalist, document-style website with sleek hover animations and page transitions.

Deploying to the Internet

The website is running locally, but to share it, we need to put it on the internet. The first step is to use GitHub, a platform for storing and managing code.

Create a GitHub Account: If you don't have one, sign up for free.
Create a New Repository: A repository (or repo) is a storage location for a project. Give it a name, like "my-landing-page."
Push the Code: GitHub will provide a URL for your new repository. Tell Claude to push your code to it.

I created this repo on GitHub. and I want you to commit this code that we've created in Riley's app to this repo [paste the repo link here].

Claude will guide you through connecting your GitHub account if you haven't already. Once done, it will "commit" (save) and "push" (upload) your files to the repository. You can now see all your project files on GitHub.

To make changes, simply tell Claude what to update. It will modify the code and push the changes to the same repository.

Now that the code is on GitHub, we can deploy it using a service like Vercel.

please deploy this to Vercel. I want to have it on the internet.

Again, Claude will walk you through connecting your Vercel account. Once set up, it will deploy the site and provide a live URL. Just like that, your website is on the internet for anyone to see.

Building a Full-Fledged Web App

Let's take it a step further and turn our landing page into a web app with user sign-in, a database, and an AI chat feature.

First, we'll plan the changes. We can ask Claude to outline its plan without generating any code.

I want to add an AI chat, meaning chat with the site's subject. So, put his info in the system prompt for the AI chat. The AI chat should be its own page. And in order to get access to the AI chat, users should have to sign in. I want to use the open AI API to do this. And I will give you the key for the open AI API. What I want to do here is don't generate any code. Just outline your plan and tell me how you want to accomplish this. We are going to be using Google Firebase. Users should sign in and at the bottom of the homepage, users should be able to add a comment and like each other's comments and stuff. Please outline how we should do this. Here are all the keys.

You'll need to provide your API keys from OpenAI and Firebase.

Setting up Firebase: 1. Go to the Firebase console and create a new project. 2. Create a new web app within the project to get your Firebase configuration keys. 3. Enable Authentication (e.g., Google Sign-In). 4. Create a Firestore Database in test mode to get started quickly.

Claude's plan will likely involve converting the static HTML site to a modern framework like Next.js, setting up a database schema for users and comments, and integrating the Firebase and OpenAI SDKs.

Once you approve the plan, Claude will get to work, creating the necessary file structure, installing dependencies, and configuring everything. It will create a .env.local file to securely store your API keys.

After the process is complete, it will provide a new local server address (e.g., localhost:3000). The new site will have a "Sign in with Google" button. Once signed in, users can leave comments, like other comments, and access the new "Chat" page to interact with an AI powered by the information you provided.

If there are any bugs, like a non-working chat feature, you can simply tell Claude:

The chat is not working. Please fix it. The Google sign-in for comments works very well though.

It will debug the issue and restart the server.

Finally, to get this new, full-featured app online, repeat the deployment process: push the updated code to your GitHub repository and then deploy it to Vercel. To use a custom domain, you can purchase one from a registrar and add it in your Vercel project settings. Claude can even help you configure the necessary DNS settings.

This is just a glimpse of what's possible. By combining a powerful AI agent with modern development tools, you can build and deploy sophisticated web applications with remarkable speed and ease.