August 2026
Do you think AI is for bearded programmers in slippers, not for someone who kneads sourdough at four in the morning? Wrong. And I am about to prove it to you—starting with something you have in your pocket.
W-MOSZCZYNSKI-PPIC-8-2026Let us start with ChatGPT, because you know it
You probably have ChatGPT on your phone. You type a question and it replies. “Write me a Facebook post about fresh butter croissants”—and you have a ready-made text. This is a chat: you write, it talks. And that is the end of it. It will not bake, call a supplier or build a website for you. It will only respond in words.
Several such chats have appeared. First ChatGPT from OpenAI, then Gemini from Google, and later Claude from Anthropic. They all work in the same way: you ask and receive an answer in the form of text. Claude is simply another such chat—a bit like ChatGPT, only from another company. For now, you do not need to know anything more about it.
Now pay attention, because this is where it gets interesting.
The same company, Anthropic, made something more than an ordinary chat—Claude Code. And this is no longer a chat. That is, you talk to it in the same way, in ordinary language, as with ChatGPT. But it does not stop at talking. It actually sits down at the computer and does the work—it creates files, builds an ordering website, calculates the cost of a recipe, organizes the oven schedule. You tell it in Polish what you want, and it builds it.
The difference is trivially simple: ChatGPT or Claude will tell you how to build a website. Claude Code will build it. And unlike an ordinary chat in a browser, Claude Code is installed like a normal program on a computer.
One thing you need to grasp immediately: VPS
Suppose Claude Code builds you a website on which customers place orders. Great. But there is a catch. If this website is on your laptop, it works only when the laptop is switched on. Do you close it at night? The website goes down. A customer wants to order a cake at eleven in the evening—there is no way. Pointless.
Therefore, an application that is supposed to work always and everywhere must be hosted on a VPS. A VPS is simply a computer that you rent over the internet and that is switched on around the clock, seven days a week. It does not go out, go to sleep or have weekends.
Think about it like this: you switch off the oven at home for the night. But a rented bakery with an oven operating non-stop bakes even while you are asleep. A VPS is that rented oven for your application. You put a website on it and a customer can order a cake at three in the morning; in the morning, the completed request is waiting on your screen. You were asleep and the business was running.
One more thing, so that you do not think this is one company’s gadget
Claude Code is not some Anthropic invention that will disappear tomorrow. It is an entirely new way of working with AI. You have stopped merely talking to a computer—you have started delegating work to it. And every major player already has its own version of the same thing. Anthropic does not have a monopoly.
The ChatGPT world—Codex. OpenAI, the same company behind ChatGPT, has its equivalent: it is called Codex. The same principle—you speak in ordinary language and it builds. It works in the terminal, in a code editor and through your ChatGPT account. Do you already pay for ChatGPT? It is included in your package.
The VS Code world—Copilot and Cursor. VS Code is the world’s most popular free program for writing code, made by Microsoft. It has a built-in assistant, GitHub Copilot, which has acquired “agent mode”, meaning that it writes and corrects things itself rather than merely making suggestions. Cursor and Windsurf have grown alongside it: enhanced versions of VS Code with an agent inside. A different name, the same story.
The Google world—Antigravity. Google responded with its own platform, Antigravity. The agent plans by itself, writes code, runs it and tests it in a browser, and finally shows you screenshots of what it has done. The trial version is free. Interestingly, you choose which “brain” is to work: Gemini from Google, Claude from Anthropic or a model from OpenAI. All in one window.
No more typing everything by hand
Do you see the pattern? Four different companies, one idea: no more typing everything by hand; it is time to delegate. This is the new level of cooperation with a machine. And it is not for selected geniuses from Silicon Valley—it is for anyone who has a computer and has not spent the last year asleep under a rock. A baker enters this world in the same way as anyone else.
Which one should you choose? To start with, it does not matter. The principles in this guide work the same way everywhere—learn one tool and you will understand them all. I use Claude Code as the example because it still maintains the highest quality when working with code, but the choice is yours.
That is enough theory. Below are 28 concepts you will hear when you start working with Claude Code. Without jargon. Each one has an example from a bakery so that it is clear why you need it at all.
1. Claude Code
Chatbots such as ChatGPT or Gemini only talk to you. Claude Code goes further—it creates files, sets up websites, installs tools and automates boring, repetitive tasks. You write to it in ordinary language, not in code. You do not have to know how to program. You must be able to describe well what you want.
Bakery: “Build me a website with an order form for First Communion cakes.” It creates the files, sets up the structure and launches the website. You do not click anything.
2. Pricing
Nothing is free. Claude Pro costs $20 per month—good to start with, but with low limits. Claude Max costs $100 or $200—the whole company can work on it and there is ample capacity. There is also an API, charged according to use: cheap when you use it occasionally, but with daily work the costs can explode. Let me explain: an API is a kind of internet connection. As in every email connection, we send something and receive something. Here we send orders and in return receive completed work. Each order costs money: around 50 groszy for an extensive order sent and more than ten zlotys for the work done. What kind of work? Yesterday, using the free version of Antigravity (the one from Google), I made a hydraulic-tank monitoring system. Completion time: 20 minutes; cost: zero zlotys. It works non-stop. You can see it—enter this address in your browser: http://62.72.20.95:8303/.
3. Prompt
A prompt is your instruction. The same principle as with an apprentice: what you give is what you get. Garbage in, garbage out. “Make a website” is an instruction for no one. “Build a one-page website for a bakery, with a brown accent colour and a form containing the fields: name, telephone number, type of bread, collection date”—that is specific.
Bakery: Tell an apprentice “bake something” and see what you get. Give them a recipe accurate to the gram—you will get bread. It is identical with Claude.
4. Terminal
A terminal is a black window in which you type commands instead of clicking. It sounds frightening; it is trivial. You need to know exactly three things: claude—opens it, Ctrl+C twice—closes it, clear—clears it. The rest is an ordinary conversation.
Bakery: It is simply the counter at which you talk to Claude. Nothing more.
5. Permissions
Claude has real power over your computer, so by default it asks for permission before every important action. This is good at the beginning—you learn what it does. But clicking “yes” every ten seconds kills the work. So you set a list of safe actions (reading files, tests), while risky things (deletion, installation) still require your permission. There is an “allow everything” option—even its creator tells you not to touch it.
Bakery: An employee who will reach for flour and read the recipe by themselves, but asks before throwing a batch into the bin or ordering goods for a thousand zlotys. So, once again, when Claude Code does work on your computer, it asks whether it may delete something or open something. It is worth reading what it is doing there.
6. Tools
Claude has built-in tools: read—reads files, write—creates and changes them, bash—runs commands in the system. You do not tell it which one to use. You describe the goal and it chooses the tool itself. This is why it is something more than a chatbot—it has hands. Ordinary ChatGPT will do nothing apart from talking; it may check something on the internet. Claude Code simply works on your computer as you do.
Bakery: You say: “order yeast and print the list for tomorrow”. A good employee knows by themselves that they use the telephone for one thing and the printer for the other. You do not need to explain this to them.
7. Context Window
The Context Window is everything Claude sees and remembers in a given conversation. Imagine a worktop with limited space. Every message and every file is a sheet of paper on the worktop. When it fills up, the oldest sheets disappear beneath the pile—and Claude forgets them. This is “context rot”: the longer the conversation, the worse the answers. So save on talking because it costs money, but Codex also gets lost. It is like an apprentice: if you talk at them too much, they will get confused.
Bakery: An order board. There is space in the morning and everything is visible. In the afternoon it is filled to the edges—the morning order for a wedding cake has disappeared somewhere under the new ones. Claude gets lost in the same way.
8. Tokens
A token is approximately three quarters of a word. Every prompt, every answer and every file read consumes tokens. This is the currency with which you pay. There are three models within Claude: Haiku, the cheapest; Sonnet, the middle one; Opus, the most expensive.
Bakery: Tokens are your fuel or flour. You do not count every gram with one loaf, but with two hundred a day you suddenly see where the budget is leaking. It is identical here.
9. Conversation history
Claude saves all conversations itself. You close the laptop, return the next day and continue from exactly where you finished. In the terminal, the claude resume command does this. In the application, you have the history at the side.
Bakery: A bookmark in a book. You do not start the recipe again just because you went to the bathroom.
10. Claude.md
A file in which you record your rules, preferences and project structure once. Claude reads it at the start of every conversation. Probably the most important file you will create—without it, Claude guesses, and guessing produces poor results. Better still, it can improve the file itself when it encounters a recurring error.
Bakery: Your production regulations on the wall. “We never replace butter with margarine. We always count orders by items, not by weight. Every new employee reads this first.” Write it once; it always works.
11. Memory
In addition to what you consciously record in Claude.md, Claude also has automatic memory. It picks up patterns from your work by itself—your style, your requirements—and remembers them between sessions. You can view and delete these memories.
Bakery: A long-serving employee who, after a month, knows by themselves that on Fridays you make a double batch of challah and that you hate burnt crust. You do not have to repeat it.
12. Compact Context
Do you remember the worktop with limited space? When the conversation becomes long, at approximately 85% full Claude tidies up: it takes the pile of notes, extracts what is important, summarizes it and lays it out on a clean worktop. This happens automatically, but you can also force it manually with the compact command. Note: when done too often, it can consume your token budget.
Bakery: You clean a cluttered worktop in the middle of the day. You leave only the current orders and put the rest away. Work is faster and without errors.
13. AI models
A model is a digital brain trained on enormous datasets. Behind Claude Code is a family of models from Anthropic: Haiku—the weakest, fast and cheap, for trivial matters. Sonnet—universal, for most tasks. Opus—the smartest and most expensive, for complex problems. You change them with the model command. There is also Fable, but that is another story (fable means a story in English). This is a model before whose name you have to cross yourself. Of course I am joking; the United States government suspended its use for two weeks because it proved too smart. You will also find it there in Claude; just be careful how much you pay for the work.
Bakery: Apprentice, journeyman and master. You do not call the master to sweep. You do not send the apprentice to make a wedding cake. You select the AI assistant for the task.
14. Deny Access
Not every file should go to Claude. System keys, passwords, confidential data—it must not read these, much less paste them into a conversation. In the settings, you make a “deny list”: what must not be touched. Once it is set, Claude will not even show those files in the results.
Bakery: Your secret recipe for the bread that built your brand. It lies in the safe and stays there. The employee does not look at it, full stop.
15. Flags
Flags are additions to the startup command. Instead of changing the model during work, you launch it immediately with a specific setting, for example claude --model opus. Entirely optional—I rarely use them myself because I rarely work in the terminal.
Bakery: You set the oven to a specific temperature before you put the tray in. A framework in advance so that you do not have to improvise later.
16. Extended Thinking
A dedicated “thinking” budget that Claude uses to analyse a problem before it starts working. In the past, you had to ask: “think intensely”. Now it is enabled by default—it decides by itself how much analysis it needs.
Bakery: Changing a tray’s name does not require thought. Planning a three-tier wedding cake—very much so. Claude senses by itself when to stop and think.
17. Slash Commands
Commands following a slash are built-in shortcuts for frequent actions. Type /help and you will see a list of all of them. The best part: you can create your own. Do you do the same thing every day? Turn it into a command.
Bakery: Your own shortcuts. One button instead of five movements. “Calculate tomorrow’s orders”—one command that you set up yourself.
18. Skills
Claude is a generalist—it can do many things, but at an average level. A skill is a file with instructions on how to do one specific thing really well. When you ask for something that matches a skill, Claude loads it by itself. It consumes more context, but the quality jumps—an honest deal.
Bakery: A recipe card for your signature cheesecake. Not “bake a cheesecake”, but exactly your method, your time, your temperature. Instead of average—your best.
19. Effort
Claude does not always have to work flat out. Opus 4.8 introduced effort control—you literally tell it how much energy to put in. Do you want something to be perfect? You give it maximum mode. This affects both quality and cost.
Bakery: You tell one employee: “do it roughly; it is going into crumbs anyway”. You tell another: “this is for a wedding; check it three times”. You set the bar.
20. Hooks
Hooks are scripts that run automatically when a given event occurs: if X happens, do Y. Crucially, they do not use AI, so they do not consume tokens and are one hundred per cent predictable. They always do the same thing.
Bakery: A timer by the oven. It does not think, has no moods and consumes no fuel. It always rings after the same amount of time. You set it once and have peace of mind.
21. MCP
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an Anthropic standard that connects Claude to external tools: Gmail, Google Drive and other applications. These are bridges. Once connected, Claude reads data from them and acts in them itself, all from one window. Here Claude ceases to be a local tool and becomes a command centre.
Bakery: You connect Claude to the mailbox that receives orders, to the inventory spreadsheet and to emails from the flour supplier. One window, and it reads the orders, updates inventory and prepares a reply to the supplier.
22. Sub-agents
A sub-agent is a separate Claude instance with one specific task. It works in isolation, with a clean context window, and sends the result back to the main agent. You can launch several at once. Instead of pushing everything into one overloaded conversation, the main agent distributes tasks to specialists.
Bakery: You set up workstations. One person only makes dough, another only decorations, a third only packaging. Each has a clean worktop and their own task. Faster and without mess.
23. Agent Teams
Unlike sub-agents, Agent Teams talk to one another and share a common task list. They work in parallel and see what one another are doing. Sub-agents report only to the boss, which becomes a bottleneck when there are more of them—here the agents communicate directly.
Bakery: A well-coordinated crew instead of separate workstations. The dough maker calls to the decorator: “finished, take it”, and the packer already knows that there will be work in five minutes. Everyone sees the same order list.
24. Image Support
You can paste a photograph or screenshot into Claude. Show an error, upload a design to reproduce. Claude sees the image and responds to it. Images consume many more tokens than text, but sometimes one photograph says more than a paragraph of explanation.
Bakery: You take a photograph of a competitor’s cake in a display case and say: “I want something in this style on the website”. Or a photograph of a misaligned price label—Claude sees what is wrong.
25. Checkpoints/Undo/Rewind
Claude makes a backup automatically before every edit. When it goes in the wrong direction and something breaks, you type /rewind, see a list of all the steps and go back to the moment before the error. You rewind the conversation, the code, or both.
Bakery: Withdrawing a batch that did not turn out well. You return to the moment before the unsuccessful idea and try differently, without starting everything from scratch.
26. Git/GitHub
Git is a version-control system—it tracks every change in a project: who changed what, when and why. GitHub is a platform where this history is stored online, like Google Drive, but for code. Claude uses Git underneath for backups and undoing changes. You do not have to be an expert—it will handle it for you.
Bakery: The history of changes in a recipe. You see that six months ago someone increased the amount of yeast by two grams—and that was when the bread began turning out better. Nothing is lost; everything can be traced.
27. Headless Mode
Normally Claude is interactive: you write, it responds, you approve, and so on in a loop. Headless mode is full automation—you add the -p flag, give it a task, and it does it from A to Z. No questions, no approvals. It returns with the finished result. There is even a “Ralph loop” that tells it to keep going in a loop until it finishes.
Bakery: A night shift without people. You leave a task in the evening, go to sleep, and it is done in the morning. This is the magic in which people build an entire application overnight while you sleep. Except that here you control what it is allowed to do—because it works by itself.
28. Worktrees
With a larger project, you work on several things at once: a new feature, a bug fix, an experiment. Worktrees create separate working copies—each has its own folder and its own branch. You launch several independent Claude instances that work in parallel and do not overwrite one another’s work. At the end, you “merge” them, meaning that you combine everything back into one whole.
Bakery: Three tables, a different product on each: bread, croissants, an experimental pumpkin roll. None mixes with another. When each is ready, they go together to the common dispatch area.
Finally—without beating about the bush
Many of these concepts may sound like Chinese to you now. That is normal. No one learned to bake by reading about an oven—they learned by putting their hands into the dough.
So there is one piece of advice: build. Launch Claude Code and make your first, simplest thing—a website for orders, a recipe-cost calculator, a shopping list for the week. And when you encounter a concept you do not understand, come back here and remind yourself.
Oh, it is still not clear? What does it look like in practice? You tell it what to do, it does it and gives you an HTML file to download. You put it on the desktop, click it and it opens. You have your website, calculator, word counter or whatever you wanted to create.
That is all. Get to work.
Wojciech Moszczyński
Wojciech Moszczyński—a graduate of the Department of Econometrics and Statistics at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń; a specialist in econometrics, finance, data science and management accounting. He specializes in the optimization of production and logistics processes. He conducts research in the area of the development and application of artificial intelligence. For years, he has been involved in popularizing machine learning and data science in business environments.
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