Intro to Claude
Claude is a highly performant, trustworthy, and intelligent AI platform built by Anthropic. Claude excels at tasks involving language, reasoning, analysis, coding, and more.
Anthropic offers two ways to build with Claude, each suited to different use cases:
| Messages API | Claude Managed Agents | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Direct model prompting access | Pre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructure |
| Best for | Custom agent loops and fine-grained control | Long-running tasks and asynchronous work |
To learn more about each, see Using the Messages API and the Claude Managed Agents overview.
Explore the latest generation of Claude models
If you're unsure which model to use, start with Claude Opus 5 for most workloads. Use Claude Fable 5.1 for demanding reasoning and long-horizon agentic work, or when your evals on Claude Opus 5 at higher effort still fall short. All current models support text and image input, text output, multilingual capabilities, vision, and tool use. Each model's page lists the platforms it's available on.
Fable 5.1
NewFor demanding reasoning and long-horizon agentic work
Recommended path for new developers
Follow these steps to go from zero to a working Claude integration.
Make your first API call
Set up your environment, install an SDK, and send your first message to Claude.
Secure your credentials
Set an expiration when you create your API key. Keep the key out of source control, client-side code, and prompts. Check whether your workload can use Workload Identity Federation instead of a static key.
Understand the Messages API
Learn the core request and response structure, including multi-turn conversations, system prompts, and stop reasons.
Choose the right model
Compare Claude models by capability and cost to pick the best fit for your use case.
Explore features and tools
Discover what Claude can do: extended thinking, web search, file handling, structured outputs, and more.
Develop with Claude
Anthropic provides developer tools to help you build and scale applications with Claude.
Explore and understand the API in your browser with playground.
Explore the full Claude API and client SDK documentation.
Learn with interactive Jupyter notebooks covering PDFs, embeddings, and more.
Key capabilities
Claude can assist with many tasks that involve text, code, and images.
Summarize text, answer questions, extract data, translate text, and explain and generate code.
Process and analyze visual input and generate text and code from images.
Support
Find answers to frequently asked account and billing questions.
Check the status of Anthropic services.
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