Complete Guide: Claude Code — Your AI Coding Assistant, Everywhere
Claude Code sessions are no longer trapped in one terminal. Because a session is tied to your Claude account, it follows you across your devices — start a task at your desk, check on it from your phone, steer it from the couch. What it is, where it runs (CLI, desktop, web, IDE), and how to use the everywhere part — including why coding you can supervise from anywhere is a real accessibility win.
Start a coding task at your desk. Check on it from your phone in the kitchen. Steer it from the couch. It's the same session, everywhere.
Claude Code is Anthropic's AI coding assistant — but the thing that makes it click for real life is that a session is no longer trapped in one terminal on one machine. It's tied to your Claude account, so it follows you across your devices. This guide covers what it is, where it runs, and how to actually use the "everywhere" part.
What Claude Code Is
Claude Code is an agentic coding tool. Instead of just answering questions, it does the work: it reads your files, writes and edits code, runs commands, fixes what it broke, and keeps going until the task is done — while you watch or walk away. You describe the goal in plain language ("add a login page," "find why the build is failing," "clean up this folder"), and it carries it out step by step.
It's genuinely useful whether you write code all day or barely at all — it's just as happy renaming a thousand files, drafting a document, or wiring up a small website as it is refactoring a codebase.
Where It Runs — Four Front Doors, One Account
Claude Code shows up in four places, and they all sign into the same Claude account:
- Terminal (CLI) — the original. Runs on your own computer (Mac, Windows, Linux), with full access to your files and tools.
- Desktop app — a friendlier window for Mac and Windows, no terminal required.
- Web — at claude.ai/code, in any browser.