1. High-Level Overview and Positioning Among AI Coding Tools Claude Code is Anthropic’s terminal-based AI coding assistant, introduced in late February 2025 as a “supervised coding agent” for software development. In contrast to traditional code completion tools that integrate into an IDE (e.g. GitHub Copilot, or IDE plugins like Cursor and Windsurf), Claude Code operates through the command line. This design lets it work in any environment – whether you’re in VS Code’s terminal, a remote SSH session, or a basic shell – rather than being tied to a specific editor. Anthropic’s engineers note that because it’s just a CLI tool, “you can bring IDE (or server) you want.” Many Anthropic developers use Claude Code alongside IDEs for the best of both worlds: starting tasks in Claude Code and then fine-tuning in their editor. ...
