Claude Code, an artificial intelligence tool that can generate computer code when people type a prompt, is having a viral moment.
The tool, which the A.I. start-up Anthropic introduced in May, has shown record growth over the past two weeks, the company said, without sharing its data. People had time to experiment with Claude Code over the holidays, Anthropic said, and users realized how capable it was.
Claude Code is one of several A.I. coding tools — which also include Base44 and Cursor — that people with no coding experience are increasingly using to build their own websites, programs and apps, a trend known as “vibecoding.” People pay a subscription fee of $20 to $200 a month to use Claude Code, depending on the features they want.
Here are five ways that people are using Claude Code:
Sam Hindes, 38, Melbourne, Australia
Mr. Hindes, an assistant principal at a school for autistic children, has four children under the age of 9 and turned to A.I. to help him organize his family’s laundry.
Last week, he prompted Claude Code to make a program to identify which clothes belonged to each of his three daughters so he could sort clean laundry into piles without their help. He took pictures of their clothes to teach Claude Code which T-shirt belonged to which daughter. Now he simply holds up the clothes to his laptop camera so the program tells him whom it belongs to.
“The whole process was done within an hour, and the girls were really excited,” he said.
Mr. Hindes said he was now building a program with Claude Code to help his daughters independently work though the steps of their morning routine, as if playing a game.
“I’ve tried to teach myself coding at various points but never stuck with it,” he said.
Rob Stephenson, 51, New York
Mr. Stephenson, an art and architecture photographer, started using Claude Code in November to build a website about a documentary feature.
The website was created in about a day, he said, with an interactive map of New York City that captured his photos and audio recordings to document life in each borough.
“Once the basic site was done, emboldened by my new capabilities, I started adding features I hadn’t even considered,” said Mr. Stephenson, who pays $20 a month for Claude Code. “Light/dark mode? Easy. Shuffle button? Done.”
If Claude Code could not solve a particular problem, he turned to Google’s A.I. chatbot, Gemini, to ask how it would approach the issue.
“I’d envisioned something like this when I started a couple of years ago, but assumed it would cost thousands of dollars to build,” he said.
Chris Roberts, 36, St. Louis
Mr. Roberts, an assistant prosecuting attorney, used Claude Code and Cursor in August to create a mobile app called AlertAssist, which lets users send a mass text to contacts in an emergency. Working in law enforcement got Mr. Roberts interested in trying to help people act quickly and safely in an emergency.
The design and user interface of the app are “very basic, but it works,” he said.
Anne Haubo Dyhrberg, 35, Newark, Del.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Ms. Haubo Dyhrberg, an assistant professor of finance at the University of Delaware, had an idea to make a stock trading simulator for her class. She consulted her husband, a software engineer, but “the task seemed too daunting.”
On Monday, she downloaded Claude Code and within two hours had a working demo of a trading simulator that her students could use to trade securities in a mock market. She has built five different trading scenarios for students to explore various challenges in financial markets.
“I never thought it would be this easy,” she said. “I can’t wait to test it out when the semester starts in two weeks.”
Joe Bacus, 38, St. Louis
Mr. Bacus, who owns a welding and metal fabrication business, tapped Claude Code last month to create an A.I. assistant to manage his calendar and find him new business opportunities. The business is just him and three others, so “we’re not in the place right now to afford an office team,” Mr. Bacus said. “It’s all on me.”
With Claude Code, he built a personal A.I. assistant that connects to his calendar, Google Sheets and Gmail account so he can easily create estimates, track the progress of jobs and organize contracts.
“I’m a skilled laborer who barely passed high school in the early 2000s,” Mr. Bacus said, adding: “But over the past few months, I’ve taught myself to build actual tools for my business.”
Natallie Rocha is a San Francisco-based technology reporter and a member of the 2025-26 Times Fellowship class, a program for early-career journalists.
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