Intro to Claude

Messages/First steps

Claude is a highly performant, trustworthy, and intelligent AI platform built by Anthropic. Claude excels at tasks involving language, reasoning, analysis, coding, and more.

The latest generation of Claude models:

Claude Opus 4.7 – Our most capable model for complex reasoning and agentic coding, with a step-change jump over Claude Opus 4.6. Learn more.

Claude Sonnet 4.6 – Frontier intelligence at scale—built for coding, agents, and enterprise workflows. Learn more.

Claude Haiku 4.5 – Fastest model with near-frontier intelligence. Learn more.

Looking to chat with Claude? Visit claude.ai.

Anthropic offers two ways to build with Claude, each suited to different use cases:

Messages API Claude Managed Agents

What it isDirect model prompting accessPre-built, configurable agent harness that runs in managed infrastructureBest forCustom agent loops and fine-grained controlLong-running tasks and asynchronous workLearn moreMessages API docs Claude Managed Agents docs

Recommended path for new developers

Follow these steps to go from zero to a working Claude integration.

1

Make your first API call

Set up your environment, install an SDK, and send your first message to Claude.

Go to the quickstart
2

Understand the Messages API

Learn the core request and response structure, including multi-turn conversations, system prompts, and stop reasons.

Read the Messages API guide
3

Choose the right model

Compare Claude models by capability and cost to pick the best fit for your use case.

See the models overview
4

Explore features and tools

Discover what Claude can do: extended thinking, web search, file handling, structured outputs, and more.

Browse the features overview