Claude Code
Actively usedAnthropic's agentic coding CLI — reads and edits entire codebases, runs tests, commits changes, and works autonomously on complex engineering tasks directly in your terminal.
About Claude Code
Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool. It runs in the terminal, reads and edits files directly, executes commands, and works through multi-step engineering tasks with the whole repository as context. It also runs outside the terminal — in the desktop app, in CI, and as an SDK you can build your own agents on.
It is the backbone of how we ship. Because it works in the terminal rather than inside one editor, it composes with everything else: git, test runners, deploy scripts, our own tooling. Long refactors, migrations, and anything you'd rather describe once than click through fifty times are where it pulls furthest ahead.
Against Cursor, the honest framing is that they solve different halves of the problem — Cursor keeps you in the loop visually, Claude Code goes further on its own while you do something else. Teams that try to pick one usually end up wanting both. OpenAI's Codex is the nearest equivalent in shape, and worth running side by side since the two models fail in different places. Aider is the open-source option if you want a terminal agent you fully control and don't mind assembling more of it yourself.
Try Claude Code yourself.
Open the site in a new tab. No signup required from us.
Claude Code alternatives
Other Development tools we use alongside Claude Code.
CodeRabbit
AI code reviews for pull requests, IDE, and CLI — codebase-aware diffs, linters and security scans, learnings from feedback, and one-click fixes for faster merges with fewer bugs.
View toolCursor
AI-powered code editor with natural language editing, codebase chat, and intelligent autocomplete for faster development.
View toolCodex
OpenAI's cloud-based software engineering agent — runs in a sandboxed environment to write features, fix bugs, run tests, and submit PRs autonomously from natural language task descriptions.
View tool
Frequently asked questions
- What is Claude Code?
- Anthropic's agentic coding CLI — reads and edits entire codebases, runs tests, commits changes, and works autonomously on complex engineering tasks directly in your terminal. Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool. It runs in the terminal, reads and edits files directly, executes commands, and works through multi-step engineering tasks with the whole repository as context. It also runs outside the terminal — in the desktop app, in CI, and as an SDK you can build your own agents on.
- What category does Claude Code fall into?
- Claude Code is a Development tool. Replace Works tracks it in the Tool Stack, our public catalogue of the AI tools we evaluate and ship with.
- What are the best alternatives to Claude Code?
- The closest alternatives we track in the same Development category are CodeRabbit, Cursor and Codex. All of them are listed in the Replace Works Tool Stack with our notes on where each one fits.
- Does Replace Works use Claude Code?
- Yes. Claude Code is in active rotation at the studio and we use it on client work.