Part 3: Developer Productivity with Claude Code
Transform your development workflow with Claude Code—an AI pair programmer that reads, edits, and executes across your entire codebase.
What You'll Learn
This section moves beyond building AI features for users and focuses on using AI to make you faster. You'll master Claude Code, a CLI tool that brings Claude directly into your development workflow as an autonomous coding partner. By the end, you'll deploy Claude Code across your team with monitoring, conventions, and security.
Lesson 8: Claude Code Fundamentals
Get productive with Claude Code in minutes. You'll install and authenticate, understand the core tools (Read, Edit, Write, Bash, Glob, Grep), and learn when to use CLI versus IDE integration. We'll cover context management—how Claude maintains conversation memory without you manually copying code. You'll track usage limits to avoid hitting them mid-sprint and build real workflows for code review, refactoring, and debugging. This lesson establishes the foundation: Claude Code is autonomous, not a chatbot—it reads your files, edits in place, and runs commands based on your high-level requests.
Lesson 9: Autonomous Agents
Scale beyond individual commands by spawning specialized agents for complex tasks. You'll learn when to delegate versus when to direct, master three agent types (Explore for research, Plan for strategy, general-purpose for implementation), and orchestrate multi-agent workflows. We'll cover parallel execution—running multiple agents simultaneously to save time—and agent collaboration patterns like Research → Plan → Implement. You'll resume agents to continue work with full context and build production patterns: codebase onboarding in minutes, end-to-end feature implementation, root cause debugging, and API integration research. Agents handle hours of work in minutes while you focus on high-level direction.
Lesson 10: Customization & Extensions
Extend Claude Code to fit your exact workflow with three extension mechanisms. Skills are personal commands you create with markdown files—perfect for automating repetitive tasks. Plugins are shareable packages distributed via npm—ideal for team standardization. MCP servers connect Claude to external systems (databases, APIs, documentation)—the most powerful option that works across all Claude apps. You'll understand the hierarchy (when to use each), create your first custom skill, install plugins from the registry, and connect MCP servers for real-time documentation. These mechanisms complement each other: MCP for external data, Plugins for team patterns, Skills for personal automation.
Lesson 11: Production & Team Workflows
Deploy Claude Code across your organization while maintaining control over quality, cost, and security. You'll monitor usage with weekly and monthly tracking, manage costs by optimizing workflows, and establish team conventions with shared skills and hooks. We'll integrate with git using /commit for thoughtful commits and /review-pr for code reviews. The hooks system enforces standards automatically—pre-commit checks, post-task actions, security audits. You'll implement security best practices for API keys and secrets, then execute a phased rollout: pilot, early adopters, full team, and ongoing optimization. By the end, your team has a Claude Code deployment that improves productivity without sacrificing code quality or security.
Why This Matters
These four lessons transform how you write code. Claude Code eliminates copy-paste between chat and editor. Agents handle multi-step tasks autonomously. Extensions customize the tool to your team's patterns. Production workflows ensure it scales beyond individual developers.
Master these lessons and you'll spend less time on boilerplate, more time on architecture. Less time debugging, more time designing. Less time context-switching, more time in flow state.
Complete these lessons before moving to Tier 2's advanced patterns.