I need you to learn Claude Code immediately - here’s how.

AI with ALLIE

The professional’s guide to quick AI bites for your personal life, work life, and beyond.

You need to understand the shift we’re going through, then make sure to either watch my in-depth Claude Code video or grab my Quick Start 5-min Claude Code resource. Throw this whole newsletter into NotebookLM or ChatGPT or Claude, add in your 2026 AI strategy and say, “Based on this shift in the production function, is my 2026 AI strategy on track? How is it on track? How is it off track? Detail both sides, pull sources as needed, rank priorities from most important to least, as well as extremely tactical suggestions to improve our 2026 planning based on AI-first best practices.”

If You Haven't Tried Claude Code Yet, I Need You Reading This Immediately

Building in 2026 will look nothing like it did in 2024. And actually, building systems today looks very different than even 6 months ago.

What became obvious over the holidays is a fundamental shift in how work gets done, a shift impacting engineers and non-engineers alike. If you haven’t been paying attention, I’m here to help so you don’t fall behind. And maybe, just maybe, change your entire life.

AI is Increasingly Taking On More Responsibility

When Boris Cherny created Claude Code as a side project back in September 2024, he had no idea it would grow into what it is today. In the 30 days before his viral tweet Dec 27 2025, Cherny landed 259 PRs - 497 commits, 40k lines added, 38k lines removed. Every single line was written by Claude Code + Opus 4.5.

Read that again.

Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code at Anthropic, disclosed that he didn't open an integrated development environment (IDE - think of it like a nice pleasantly designed way of coding, debugging, and testing in one place) even once during that past month. Instead, every line of code he shipped was written entirely by Claude Code powered by Opus 4.5.

At the Dreamforce conference in Oct 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff that even though Claude AI is now writing 90% of code for most teams at the company, humans are still essential. "I made this prediction that in six months, 90% of code would be written by AI models. Within Anthropic and within a number of companies that we work with, that is absolutely true now."

This is not hype. This is happening at the frontier AI companies right now.

Anthropic released helpful research on how they use Claude Code. The data suggests people are increasingly delegating more autonomy to Claude over time. Engineers delegate increasingly complex work to Claude and Claude requires less oversight. The most striking change between February and August 2025 is that there are now proportionately many more transcripts using Claude to implement new features (14.3% → 36.9%) and do code design or planning (1.0% → 9.9%). Anthropic employees shared that they are fully delegating anywhere between 0% and 20% of their work to Claude Code. If your coworker is still telling you that AI is just ‘fancy autocomplete’, please make them read that research.

So even though Claude Code came out in February 2025, the explosion only happened during holidays 2025. It was a mass awakening to what AI can actually do.

Why, you ask? Well, Claude Opus 4.5 (my favorite model ever) came out November 24, 2025. And everyone was home. And Anthropic increased usage limits. And a lot of people had time to experiment. And Claude Code was there waiting for them. It was a recipe for dozens of viral tweets on the insanity of today’s AI tools.

Claude Code is the Everything App (With a Terrible Name)

Claude Code is more of a general agent. You can use it for tasks other than coding as well, like making an excel invoice, data analysis, errands on your machine (like renaming all of your screenshots to be based on the image contents, or explaining why your computer is so slow). This is why I believe the name is wrong. It should be called Claude Agent. It's as close to the "Everything App" as anything I've experienced.

Claude Code is named horribly. I know it. You know it. Anthropic knows it. The first hump I need you to get over is the name. Even if you have never coded in your life, you can use Claude Code.

How I Use Claude Code

“Holy crap” is a frequent exclamation in my home now. I spent my break building with Claude Code. I coded in college, I am not an engineer, and yet I set up my own local server and built an entire app that I had wanted for the last year. The first version took about 3.5 hours and included Notion integrations, Slack integrations, and connections to OpenAI and Claude API keys. After about 7 total hours of iteration, I had my ideal personal productivity tool doing everything I needed with dictation integrations so I can speak to the system and perfectly configured notification workflows.

I’ve taught millions of people how to use AI and most people really struggle with the blank page. It’s like they’re looking at a fire-breathing dragon and instead of asking it to fly them to a new dimension, they ask it to breathe some fire to warm up some broccoli.

So, if you’re stuck wondering what Claude Code can do for you, ask it for help. And I have one hack that is going to blow your mind. Inside Claude app or Claude Code, you’re going to ask Claude to interview you on one big area of your life (ex: work, career, health, 2026 goals, family, friends, your value system, whatever). Start with one area. Answer it as honestly and specifically as you can. Have Claude build out a context document for you based on that conversation. Then you are literally going to feed that context doc into Claude Code and say (and feel free to break this up):

This is the experience I want everyone to have. When you want something, you ask. When you’re lost, you talk through it. When something doesn't work, you tell it. When you want an edit, you describe it. When you can’t get specific, you talk about first principles. When you hit an error, you paste it in and ask Claude to find a creative path forward. This conversational, iterative style of building feels fundamentally different from programming. It feels like directing. I am my own Christopher Nolan. Just with cool coded solutions instead of 2 Oscars.

This technology feels like there is a 24/7 alien inside my computer that can endlessly spawn more aliens. (Is that weird? Does that make you more or less likely to use it?). Increasingly, code is no longer the bottleneck.

How Others Use Claude Code

Claude Code as a Chief of Staff is a big one people are leaning into. Steve Faulkner shared that he uses Claude Code with the prompt: "You are my personal assistant and chief of staff. Self organize using markdown files." He says it has replaced the entire bucket of what you would label productivity software, and 95% of his input is through voice dictation. Here’s the chief of staff approach.

Another user took it further, building a complete personal productivity system.

Theo built a Chrome extension that blocks distracting websites like Twitter and other social media unless his Claude Code is actively running inference.

People are using Claude Code for use cases that simply could not happen before: complex data analytics on CSVs, redoing PhD-level work in 20 minutes, writing entire political science papers, a subscription cancelation platform that saved someone $27k, and analyzing a human's raw DNA to find concerning health-related issues. One guy even tweeted “I wish I could run Claude Code on my body” and another woman saying she wants to put all of her financial data into Claude. As impressive or funny as these tweets are, they are also going to cause next-level data privacy concerns.

Why Your Entire Team Needs a Build Day (Not 5 Minutes — A Real Day)

I know many of my readers are executives and business leaders managing large teams and companies. So please listen to this: if you are not carving out time for your team to build sh*t, you are failing them.

I don't mean 5 minutes. I mean you need to give your team a full day for a build-a-thon or hackathon (here’s how), where every single person builds something they've been desperately needing. Budget 3-5 hours minimum. They need to FEEL the magic of these new systems. (And if you are an IC, ask your boss to carve out build time for you!)

That moment has to happen for every single person at your company, but especially for people in the Production function (ex: engineers, product managers, designers, UX researchers, project managers, program managers).

Newer engineers and recent graduates may actually have an advantage in this AI-powered environment. Without legacy assumptions about what AI models can and cannot do, and without deep entrenchment in the business processes of the last 40 years, a lot of executives think early in career professionals may be able to leverage the technology more effectively.

Your experienced team members might actually need MORE help adjusting to the alien that is Claude Code. The biggest challenge isn't the technology itself, but rather the mental adjustment required to trust AI capabilities that continue to expand rapidly. It’s more about mindset than learning what buttons to click.

Consider diverse teams where you blend these two styles and approaches. You need the subject matter expertise blended with the reinvention-friendly mindset.

Your Next Claude Code Step

I've put together a complete tutorial showing you exactly how to get started with Claude Code, even if you've never touched a command line. Watch it. Then spend this week or weekend building a new system or interface you've been desperately needing.

Software engineering is changing, and we are entering a flourishing new period in coding history.

And we're still just getting started.

Stay curious, stay informed,

Allie

Inside AI-First Academy, you'll learn how to rebuild you work from the ground up. We cover the full progression: from AI Basics to custom assistants to full workflow automation. This is the same training other professionals at Amazon, Apple, and Salesforce are using to stop dabbling and start building.

You'll learn how to:

✔ Write prompts that produce usable, business-ready outputs (not generic fluff)

✔ Build custom GPTs and reusable AI systems that handle your recurring tasks

✔ Automate research, reports, meeting synthesis, and multi-step workflows

✔ Prototype real tools and dashboards - no code required

✔ Deploy AI agents that work for you, not just with you

✔ Navigate the best of Claude, ChatGPT, and the latest agentic features with instant access to our 90-minute Agentic AI Workshop

(Want to upskill your whole team? Get a company-wide license)

Feedback is a Gift

I would love to know what you thought of this newsletter and any feedback you have for me. Do you have a favorite part? Wish I would change something? Felt confused? Please reply and share your thoughts or just take the poll below so I can continue to improve and deliver value for you all.