Claude Code is a coding tool that developers run in their computer's terminal. It reads an entire software project, then writes, edits, and tests code across multiple files based on plain-language instructions — like having a software engineer on call who can work through a full codebase independently.

Claude Code launched as a research preview in November 2024 and became generally available on May 22, 2025. It integrates with popular developer tools including VS Code, JetBrains, and GitHub Actions, and can open pull requests autonomously. Anthropic has stated that the majority of its own code is now written using Claude Code. The product is estimated to have reached approximately $2.5 billion in annualized revenue by early 2026, with enterprise customers representing more than half of that total. Claude Code is evaluated using the SWE-bench benchmark, a standardized test of an AI's ability to resolve real software engineering problems; Claude Opus 4 scored 72.5% on that benchmark.