What is Claude Code? What it does, where it runs and what it costs

What is Claude Code?

Claude Code is an agentic coding tool from Anthropic. It reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands and connects to the tools you already use.

The word that matters there is agentic. Claude in a browser answers you. Claude Code does the thing, checks whether it worked, and carries on.

For example, ask a chat window to rename 200 files and it writes you instructions. Ask Claude Code and the files are renamed.

It works the way a new teammate would. It searches your project for the files it needs, reads them to understand the context, and makes coordinated changes across them.

If you want my verdict on it, it's in my Claude Code review.

What can Claude Code do?

It can do almost anything you would do at a computer with files, a terminal and your apps. Here's what it does in my business:

• It builds tools – every one of the 450 free tools on navid.me, like my UTM builder and my llms.txt generator
• It builds and runs my apps – my business runs on apps it built, replacing software I used to pay for
• It connects my tools – it wrote the 23 open source MCP servers I've published, so any agent can reach the apps I use
• It handles the admin – it renames and sorts files, pulls data out of documents, and drafts from my own notes
• It checks its own work – it opens what it built in a browser, clicks through it, and fixes what breaks

The last one matters most. Anthropic's own advice is to give Claude Code a way to verify its work, because the more it can check itself, the further it gets without you.

How is it different from Claude in a browser?

It has hands.

Claude in a browser reads what you paste and writes back. It cannot open a file on your machine, save one, or run anything there.

Claude Code works inside a folder on your machine. It reads what is there, changes it, runs commands, and can reach outside to other services.

So the real difference is not intelligence. It is the same model, and the difference is access. My Claude review covers both, and my Claude Code review goes deeper on the agent.

Where does Claude Code run?

Claude Code runs in 6 places, and the choice matters more than it first appears.

The first 4 run on your machine and share the same configuration, project memory and connected tools, so all 4 read the same files. The web and the phone app run in the cloud by default and check out a repository instead.

But that is a default, not a limit. Run claude remote-control and your phone drives the session on your machine, with @ autocompleting your own file paths from the phone.

It also reaches past those 6. It works in Slack through Claude Tag, and in your Chrome browser, where it can test pages, read console logs and fill in forms.

The desktop app holds Claude Code next to Chat and Claude Cowork, which Anthropic calls Claude Code for the rest of your work.

That split between your machine and the cloud is worth holding on to. It decides where the folder holding your context has to live, which is the whole subject of an AI OS.

My guide to installing Claude Code walks you through each one, step by step.

Do you need to be technical?

You don't, and the name is the only hard part.

You type in plain English. It stops before anything risky, you can make it ask before every change, and it can undo its own work.

What you do need is a project, meaning a folder on your machine that holds the thing you are working on. That is it.

What does it cost?

It needs a paid plan: Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise or Console. The free Claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code.

You can also point it at a third-party provider instead, such as Amazon Bedrock, Google Cloud's Agent Platform or Microsoft Foundry, and pay per use there.

No prices are published in the docs themselves, so anyone quoting you a figure is quoting a pricing page that moves.

I pay for 2 Max plans, because Claude Code does almost all of my building. You can start on Pro and move up when you hit the limits.

How I use Claude Code every day

I run it in VS Code, with Codex in the same window, so one agent builds and the other checks the work.

Every session starts from my AI OS: my CLAUDE.md files, 190 skills, 15 plugins and 9 agents that tell it who I am and how I work.

It connects to my apps through MCP servers, and I've published 23 of them as open source on my MCP servers page.

Nothing goes live until it has been opened in a browser, on desktop and phone, in light and dark mode.

And when I need a good first prompt, my Claude Code prompt generator writes it with the files, a check Claude can run, and what done looks like. My full setup is on How I use AI.

I set up the same kind of AI OS for companies as an AI consultant, and I teach teams to work with Claude Code in my AI training.

AI tools in this guide

These are the AI tools this guide mentions, each with my full review:

Claude Code

Paid

AI coding agent that also writes, researches, and runs full business workflows from plain English.

Code assistantsAI agentsLLMProductivity

Claude

Freemium

AI assistant, coding agent, and platform for reasoning, writing, and complex analysis.

LLMAI agentsCode assistantsContent creation

Claude Cowork

Paid

Claude's background agent mode that researches, writes, and builds while you focus on other work.

AI agentsProductivityResearchWriting

Visual Studio Code

Free

AI coding in VS Code with GitHub Copilot for building and debugging.

Code assistants

Cursor

Freemium

Code editor with AI pair-programming and intelligent autocomplete.

Code assistantsProductivity

Codex

Paid

OpenAI's agentic coding assistant that writes, edits, and ships code from natural-language instructions.

Code assistantsAI agentsProductivity

What to do next

Final thoughts on Claude Code

Claude Code is the same Claude, with access to your files.

So the useful question is not whether you can code. It is what you would hand to somebody who could sit at your machine and do the boring half of your week.

Keep reading:

• How to install Claude Code – every route, including the 2 that need nothing installed
• Claude Code commands – all 118 of them, grouped by when you reach for one
• Claude Code permission modes – what it may do without asking you first
• How to build an AI operating system (AI OS) – the folder that tells it who you are

Then pick the folder you would hand it first.