Moving Beyond Beginner Level with Claude Code: A Guide for Newcomers
This article was written manually by a human.
I’m Oikon, a software engineer at an international company.
The other day, I casually made the following post:
As mentioned in the post, I had an opportunity to think about what information Claude Code beginners need, which led me to wonder about how to move beyond beginner level with Claude Code. For context, Claude Code is an AI coding tool provided by Anthropic.
When I posted about this on X (formerly Twitter), I received various opinions and had some personal insights, so I felt like writing an article about it. That’s literally the only reason I’m writing this, so feel free to skim through it!
As for defining what a “beginner” means—honestly, it’s difficult to establish shared definitions in short social media exchanges. Personally, I was thinking of someone who has some coding experience but is new to Claude Code.
The Current State of Claude Code
Before discussing how to move beyond beginner level, I’d like to share my personal understanding of Claude Code as of late August.
Claude Code is an AI coding tool that rapidly gained popularity around late May. I’ve previously written an article about why it became such a hot topic, so check that out if you’re interested.
There are countless AI coding tools out there—GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, Codex CLI, Kiro, and many more. Among them, Claude Code is popular for its model performance, excellent coding capabilities, and flat-rate pricing.
Claude Code has various features and tips. Here are some keywords that come to mind:
- CLAUDE.md
- ultrathink
- Slash Commands
- Custom Slash Commands
- MCP Server integration (there’s a lot just in this category alone)
- Subagent
- Hooks
- Plan mode
- Opus Plan mode
- Claude Code GitHub Actions
- output-style
- statusline
- user/local settings
- claude -p (stateless call)
- —dangerously-skip-permissions
- allow/ask/deny …
I just listed these as they came to mind. There are definitely more features I’m not thinking of right now.
Having so many features with high flexibility is one reason Claude Code is popular, but many beginners find it overwhelming. I think the perceived difficulty comes from:
- Too many commands
- It’s a CLI tool (the black screen is intimidating)
- Fear that it might run wild and delete all your files
All of these are things you don’t need to master completely, can overcome with practice, or can prevent from happening in the first place.
So when I thought about what beginners should aim for first, I received various opinions. In this article, I’ll share and analyze the comments I received.
Thoughts on Moving Beyond Beginner Level with Claude Code
From here, I’ll explore what it means to move beyond beginner level based on the opinions I received on X.
① Mastering Custom Slash Commands
Being able to use Custom Slash Commands means you’ve moved beyond beginner level—this was the initial idea I mentioned in my original post. Looking back, I think this wasn’t the best criterion!
To briefly explain Custom Slash Commands: they let you “invoke pre-written instructions with a single command.”
This feature is primarily used to “turn frequently used instructions into prompts for reuse,” so its main purpose is efficiency. That’s why I thought a beginner who’s getting comfortable could master it.
Slash Commands:
② Maintaining CLAUDE.md
I received feedback about maintaining CLAUDE.md.
CLAUDE.md is a persistent context that gets loaded into Claude Code, where you write project information and coding conventions that you want the AI agent to know as a baseline.
This CLAUDE.md is often created with /init during initial setup, but as development progresses, its contents often become outdated.
Therefore, by regularly maintaining CLAUDE.md, you need to course-correct the AI agent’s instructions to align with the actual project. From a context engineering perspective, this task is extremely important.
Being mindful of the context you provide to AI agents like this could be considered moving beyond beginner level.
CLAUDE.md:
③ Managing Context with /clear and /compact
I received two comments about being able to manage context with /clear and /compact.
To explain each feature:
/clear: Resets the context window. Starts a new session/compact: Summarizes the context window and carries over part of it to a new session
Like the CLAUDE.md mentioned earlier, these opinions also emphasize the importance of being mindful of the AI agent’s context.
Each of these features is documented in the Slash Commands documentation mentioned above.
④ Simply Being Able to Keep Using AI Tools
This one really made me stop and think.
While the original discussion was about moving beyond beginner level with Claude Code specifically, the fact that you’re even trying Claude Code already makes you more familiar with AI tools than most engineers out there. Couldn’t that alone be considered moving beyond beginner level?
Understanding AI tools is important, but simply being able to use AI tools is also valuable.
Summary
This article covered the rather open-ended topic of moving beyond beginner level with Claude Code, but it personally gave me a lot to think about.
Here’s the original post again. I received several other interesting opinions, so feel free to browse through them.
If I had to seriously define what it means to move beyond beginner level, my conclusion would be whether you can be mindful of context. However, I believe this context engineering landscape will probably look different six months from now.
So what can you do right now? Here’s my take.
If you’ve recently started using Claude Code, keep at it and get comfortable with AI coding. There are things about AI tools that you can only understand by using them.
If you’ve never used Claude Code, try it out. Here’s the command:
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-codeSet up:
I believe that when it comes to AI coding, the most important thing is simply getting comfortable with it. As you keep using it, you’ll naturally move beyond beginner level, so make sure to spend more time with AI tools in your daily workflow.
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