10 Claude Code Tips from the Team That Built It

Based on a thread by Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code at Anthropic (Jan 31, 2026)

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There’s no single "correct" way to use Claude Code — everyone’s setup is different. These tips come directly from the Claude Code team at Anthropic. Experiment and see what works for you.

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1. Do More in Parallel

Spin up 3–5 git worktrees at once, each running its own Claude session. This is the single biggest productivity unlock and the top tip from the team.

• Some people name their worktrees and set up shell aliases (za, zb, zc) to hop between them in one keystroke.
• Others keep a dedicated "analysis" worktree only for reading logs and running queries.

📖 Docs: Parallel sessions with git worktrees

2. Start Every Complex Task in Plan Mode

Pour your energy into the plan so Claude can one-shot the implementation.

• One person has one Claude write the plan, then spins up a second Claude to review it as a staff engineer.
• The moment something goes sideways, switch back to plan mode and re-plan. Don’t keep pushing.
• Explicitly tell Claude to enter plan mode for verification steps, not just for the build.

3. Invest in Your CLAUDE.md

After every correction, end with: "Update your CLAUDE.md so you don’t make that mistake again." Claude is eerily good at writing rules for itself.

• Ruthlessly edit your CLAUDE.md over time. Keep iterating until Claude’s mistake rate measurably drops.
• One engineer tells Claude to maintain a notes directory for every task/project, updated after every PR, then points CLAUDE.md at it.

4. Create Your Own Skills and Commit Them to Git

If you do something more than once a day, turn it into a skill or slash command. Ideas from the team:

• Build a /techdebt command and run it at the end of every session to find and kill duplicated code.
• Set up a slash command that syncs 7 days of Slack, GDrive, Asana, and GitHub into one context dump.
• Build domain-specific agents (e.g. analytics engineers that write dbt models, review code, and test changes in dev).

📖 Docs: Extend Claude with skills

5. Claude Fixes Most Bugs by Itself

• Enable the Slack MCP, paste a Slack bug thread into Claude, and just say "fix." Zero context switching.
• Or just say "Go fix the failing CI tests." Don’t micromanage how.
• Point Claude at docker logs to troubleshoot distributed systems — it’s surprisingly capable at this.

6. Level Up Your Prompting

• Challenge Claude. Say "Grill me on these changes and don’t make a PR until I pass your test." Make Claude be your reviewer.
• Push for elegance. After a mediocre fix, say: "Knowing everything you know now, scrap this and implement the elegant solution."
• Reduce ambiguity. Write detailed specs before handing work off. The more specific you are, the better the output.

7. Terminal & Environment Setup

• The team loves Ghostty for its synchronized rendering, 24-bit color, and proper Unicode support.
• Use /statusline to customize your status bar to always show context usage and current git branch.
• Color-code and name your terminal tabs (some use tmux) — one tab per task/worktree.
• Use voice dictation. You speak 3× faster than you type, and your prompts get way more detailed. (Hit fn twice on macOS.)

📖 Docs: Terminal configuration

8. Use Subagents

• Append "use subagents" to any request where you want Claude to throw more compute at the problem.
• Offload individual tasks to subagents to keep your main agent’s context window clean and focused.
• Route permission requests to Opus 4.5 via a hook — let it scan for attacks and auto-approve the safe ones.

📖 Docs: Hooks — PermissionRequest

9. Use Claude for Data & Analytics

Ask Claude Code to use the bq CLI to pull and analyze metrics on the fly. The team has a BigQuery skill checked into the codebase, and everyone uses it for analytics queries directly in Claude Code. Boris says he hasn’t written a line of SQL in 6+ months.

This works for any database that has a CLI, MCP, or API.

10. Learning with Claude

• Enable the "Explanatory" or "Learning" output style in /config to have Claude explain the why behind its changes.
• Have Claude generate a visual HTML presentation explaining unfamiliar code — it makes surprisingly good slides.
• Ask Claude to draw ASCII diagrams of new protocols and codebases.
• Build a spaced-repetition learning skill: you explain your understanding, Claude asks follow-ups to fill gaps, stores the result.

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Source: @bcherny on X · 7.5M+ views on the original thread

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