💎 Key Takeaways
| Course Name | Claude Platform 101 |
|---|---|
| Platform | Claude Academy |
| Price | Free |
| Duration | 1.5 hours, self-paced |
| Level | Beginner to Intermediate |
| Prerequisites | Comfort reading and writing code in at least one language; basic command-line familiarity; Claude Console account with API key and prepaid credit |
| Skills | API request construction, model selection, agent loop design, tool use integration, MCP server connection, context window management, managed agent deployment |
About
This course takes you from making isolated API calls to building production-ready agents on the Claude Platform. You learn how a request is structured, how the agent loop works, how to extend Claude with tools and external services, and how to keep costs and context under control across long-running sessions. Every lesson ends with runnable code, so you leave each section with something working.
Claude Academy is Anthropic’s official learning platform. The course reflects first-party knowledge of the Claude API, SDK, and platform infrastructure, including built-in tools that run on Anthropic’s own infrastructure and managed agent capabilities handled server-side.
Who’s Teaching
N/A
What’s Covered
- Making your first API call with
messages.createand reading the structured response - Selecting the right Claude model (Fable, Opus, Sonnet, Haiku) based on cost and latency trade-offs
- Building the agent loop by hand, then replacing it with the SDK’s Tool Runner
- Extending Claude with tool use and extended thinking for complex reasoning tasks
- Integrating built-in tools (web search, code execution, web fetch) that run on Anthropic’s infrastructure
- Using Skills to package reusable procedures and MCP servers to connect third-party tools without writing schemas
- Applying four context-management patterns to keep long sessions within the context window and on budget
- Building and consuming a managed agent where Anthropic runs the loop and streams results back
- Using Claude Code to build with the API and reviewing agent-generated code
Skills You’ll Develop
- Constructing and sending structured API requests to the Claude Platform
- Evaluating and selecting models based on job requirements, cost, and latency
- Designing and implementing agent loops with tool use
- Connecting Claude to external systems via MCP servers
- Managing context windows and controlling spend across long-running agents
- Building and consuming managed (server-run) agents via event streams
- Reviewing and validating AI-generated code
Level
Beginner to Intermediate. Suited for developers who have used Claude in a chat interface and want to build it into their own applications. No prior experience with LLMs or agent frameworks is required, but you need to be comfortable reading and running code.
