I'm a marketing person. I don't write code. But I've been using Claude Code almost daily for several months now. And it's changed what I think AI is useful for.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of things I actually did with it in the past couple of weeks. None of these is technically impressive, but each would have otherwise required independent tools, some paid, some free, with hard limits. Claude Code just… handled them.
Claude Code differs from its web-based counterparts, such as Claude and ChatGPT, though both share many common features. Claude Code *does* things. It runs on your terminal, touches your files, installs tools, executes code, and chains tasks together. It excels when these come together.
I think it's the best general AI agent out there right now. People tend to overcomplicate "agents". For most of my work, end-to-end autonomous agents don't make sense. But task-based agents do. You give it a discrete job, it figures out the tools, and it gets it done. Claude Code also lets you build reusable task-based agents, which makes it a great on-ramp for understanding how agents and tool-calling actually work.
The use cases are all work-related but wildly varied, such as video editing, data analysis, API automation, and front-end development. That's the point. This isn't a specialized tool. It's a general agent that figures things out.
It's been a process of discovery. What I've listed here barely scratches the surface. It's now my default for any complex task, and genuinely feels like the ceiling on what I can do just disappeared.
One unexpected side effect: I have a newfound respect for open source. I had no idea how much of my work now depends on projects people built and gave away. Claude Code is the interface, but open source is the engine. Personal software will never be the same.
If you're non-technical and curious about AI agents, this is the one to try.