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Claude Code: A minimal setup for everyday engineering work

Claude Code is Anthropic's command-line tool for software engineering tasks. This guide shows you how to install it, connect it to a project, and run your first few tasks — without configuring anything you don't need. If you want a practical AI coding setup that stays out of your way, this is the starting point. The whole setup takes under ten minutes and works on any project you already have running locally. No special scaffolding required.

5 min

How to use MCP to give Claude access to your own tools

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard that lets you connect Claude to external data sources and tools — databases, APIs, file systems, or anything else you can wrap in a small server. This guide walks through what MCP is, how to set up a basic server, and how to connect it to Claude so your agents can call your own systems. You do not need deep infrastructure knowledge. If you can run a Node or Python script, you can build and connect an MCP server.

6 min

Build a 3-step research agent with Claude and a single prompt file

A research agent is a structured prompt system that breaks a broad question into smaller tasks, runs each one in sequence, and assembles the results into a usable output. This guide shows you how to build a three-step version using Claude and a single prompt file — no frameworks, no orchestration libraries. You define three prompts, run them in order, and pipe the output of each into the next. The result is a repeatable research workflow you can apply to any topic in under a minute.

6 min

Claude Code vs. Cursor: which one ships faster for solo builders

Claude Code and Cursor are both AI coding tools aimed at developers, but they solve the problem differently. Claude Code runs in the terminal and works on your whole project. Cursor runs inside a fork of VS Code and focuses on the file you have open. For solo builders who move fast across multiple files, the differences matter. This review compares both tools on the tasks that come up most in a solo workflow: refactoring, writing tests, debugging, and generating boilerplate. No benchmarks — just real task results.

6 min

What the latest Claude 4 update changes for prompt engineers

Claude 4 is Anthropic's fourth-generation model family, which includes Opus 4, Sonnet 4, and Haiku 4. The latest updates to this family change how the models handle long prompts, system instructions, and tool use — all of which affect how prompt engineers write and structure their work. This post covers the specific changes that matter in practice: what still works, what works better, and what needs to be rewritten for prompts designed around earlier Claude versions.

6 min

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google: which model to use for which job in 2026

Model selection is the decision of matching a specific AI model to a specific type of task based on that model's demonstrated strengths. In 2026, the three dominant providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google — each have models that lead in different areas. This guide maps the most common builder tasks to the model that handles them best today: writing, coding, reasoning, research, document analysis, and agent work. The goal is a practical reference, not a ranking. The best model is the one that does your job reliably.

7 min