Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool for the terminal: a program you launch inside a project directory and drive with plain-English instructions instead of flags and subcommands. It reads the codebase around it, carries out routine tasks, explains code you did not write, and handles git work, and it can be used from a terminal, from an IDE, or by tagging @claude on GitHub. The audience is working developers who already spend their day in a shell and would rather describe a change than click through a tool. This repository is the public home of the project: installation instructions, a set of bundled plugins, the issue tracker and links to the official documentation. It was created in February 2025 and has since collected roughly 148,000 stars and 25,000 forks, which makes it one of the most-watched developer tools on GitHub.
What it does
The core loop is simple: you type what you want in natural language, and the agent does the work in your actual project rather than in a chat window. The materials here call out four things specifically — executing routine tasks, explaining complex code, handling git workflows, and doing all of it through natural-language commands.
Around that core sit two layers of extension:
- Plugins. The repository ships several Claude Code plugins that add custom commands and agents, documented in its own plugins directory.
- Mods. The release this video covers adds Mods, a way for plugins to change Claude's deeper behavior rather than only adding new commands.
The first Mod is called You Should Know. It runs a side agent that watches every move Claude makes while coding and flags the things you would otherwise scroll past — the flaw in shipped code that you miss because you were reading the summary and not the diff. One command turns it on, inside the terminal, and the catch happens while the work is still in front of you instead of after a review round. As the video puts it, Claude Code no longer just writes code; it watches itself doing it.
How it works
You run claude from a project directory and the agent works against the files it finds there. The project is TypeScript, distributed as an installed command-line program, and the README lists Node.js 18 or newer as a requirement.
Plugins extend that program with commands and agents. Mods are the deeper hook: a Mod can alter how Claude behaves, which is what makes a persistent watcher agent possible — You Should Know is not a command you remember to invoke, it is a second agent running alongside the first for the whole session. Feedback has an in-product path too: the /bug command files issues from inside Claude Code, or you can open a GitHub issue directly.
Getting started
Installation is a single command on each platform:
- macOS and Linux, recommended:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash - Homebrew:
brew install --cask claude-code - Windows, recommended:
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex - WinGet:
winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode
Installation through npm (@anthropic-ai/claude-code) still exists but is marked deprecated in the README, so prefer one of the installers above. Then change into your project directory and run claude. Setup options, uninstall steps and troubleshooting live in the official documentation at code.claude.com; there is also a Claude Developers Discord linked from the README for questions that are not bug reports.
When to use it / when not
Reach for it when the work is concrete and local: a refactor across several files, a commit history you need to untangle, an unfamiliar module you have to understand before touching it. The Mods layer makes it more interesting for people who do not fully trust an agent yet — You Should Know gives you a second opinion on the agent's own output without adding a review step to your routine.
It is less suited to anyone who wants to inspect or modify the engine itself. The repository hosts installers, plugins and issues rather than a build-it-yourself codebase, and the materials here describe no local-model or self-hosted mode. Anything about pricing, limits or which model is behind it is not in this README, so check the documentation rather than assuming.
If you write code in a terminal, this is the project in the category worth knowing by name, and Mods is the part of it to pay attention to this week: it turns the plugin system from a shortcut mechanism into something that can change how the agent behaves. Developers who have tried a coding agent, liked the speed and distrusted the blind spots now have a direct answer to the second half of that — a watcher that flags the mistake while you can still do something about it. Teams evaluating agentic tooling should look at the plugins and Mods directories first; that is where this tool stops being a single product and starts being a platform.