Claude Code Changed How I Ship Code — Here’s My Honest Take After 3 Months

Three months ago, I was skeptical. Another AI coding tool? I’d already tried GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and a handful of VS Code extensions that promised to “10x my productivity.” Most of them were glorified autocomplete — helpful for boilerplate, useless for anything that required actual understanding of a codebase. Then I installed Claude Code, and within the first hour, it did something none of the others had done: it read my entire project, understood the architecture, and fixed a bug I’d been ignoring for two weeks.

This isn’t a puff piece. I’ve been using Claude Code daily on production projects — Kubernetes deployments, FastAPI services, React dashboards — and I have strong opinions about where it shines and where it still falls short. Let me walk you through what I’ve learned.

What Makes Claude Code Different

Most AI coding assistants work at the file level. You highlight some code, ask a question, get an answer. Claude Code operates at the project level. It’s an agentic coding tool that reads your codebase, edits files, runs commands, and integrates with your development tools. It works in your terminal, IDE (VS Code and JetBrains), browser, and even as a desktop app.

The key word here is agentic. Unlike a chatbot that answers questions and waits, Claude Code can autonomously explore your codebase, plan changes across multiple files, run tests to verify its work, and iterate until things actually pass. You describe what you want; Claude figures out how to build it.

Here’s how I typically start a session:

# Navigate to your project
cd ~/projects/my-api

# Launch Claude Code
claude

# Ask it something real
> explain how authentication works in this codebase

That first command is where the magic happens. Claude doesn’t just grep for “auth” — it traces the entire flow from middleware to token validation to database queries. It builds a mental model of your code that persists throughout the session.

The Workflows That Actually Save Me Time

1. Onboarding to Unfamiliar Code

I recently inherited a Node.js monorepo with zero documentation. Instead of spending a week reading source files, I ran:

> give me an overview of this codebase
> how do these services communicate?
> trace a user login from the API gateway to the database

In 20 minutes, I had a better understanding of the architecture than I would have gotten from a week of code reading. Claude identified the service mesh pattern, pointed out the shared protobuf definitions, and even flagged a deprecated authentication path that was still being hit in production.

2. Bug Fixing With Context

Here’s where Claude Code absolutely destroys traditional AI tools. Instead of pasting error messages and hoping for the best, you can do this:

> I'm seeing a 500 error when users try to reset their password.
> The error only happens for accounts created before January 2025.
> Find the root cause and fix it.

Claude will read the relevant files, check the database migration history, identify that older accounts use a different hashing scheme, and propose a fix — complete with a migration script and updated tests. All in one shot.

3. The Plan-Then-Execute Pattern

For complex changes, I’ve adopted a two-phase workflow that dramatically reduces wasted effort:

# Phase 1: Plan Mode (read-only, no changes)
claude --permission-mode plan

> I need to add OAuth2 support. What files need to change?
> What about backward compatibility?
> How should we handle the database migration?

# Phase 2: Execute (switch to normal mode)
# Press Shift+Tab to exit Plan Mode

> Implement the OAuth flow from your plan.
> Write tests for the callback handler.
> Run the test suite and fix any failures.

Plan Mode is like having a senior architect review your approach before you write a single line of code. Claude reads the codebase with read-only access, asks clarifying questions, and produces a detailed implementation plan. Only when you’re satisfied do you let it start coding.

CLAUDE.md — Your Project’s Secret Weapon

This is the feature that separates power users from casual users. CLAUDE.md is a special file that Claude reads at the start of every conversation. Think of it as persistent context that tells Claude how your project works, what conventions to follow, and what to avoid.

Here’s what mine looks like for a typical project: