If you’ve spent any time recently in founder conversations, developer Slack groups, or investor WhatsApp chats, one pattern keeps coming up:

“Have you tried Claude Code yet?”

What’s interesting is not just that people are talking about it but who. This isn’t limited to hardcore engineers. Increasingly, it’s investors, operators, and “non-technical” power users who are making Claude Code part of their daily workflow.

Claude Code isn’t just another AI coding tool. It represents a deeper shift in how people interact with LLMs for work.

To find out what all the hype is about, and what it means for investors, I spent the xmas break to nerd out, get deep into the Claude Code rabbit hole, and launched this free Slack “Automation Experiment” group (glad to see 350+ of you already in there, sharing your workflows & ideas) so we can learn from each other.

In today’s episode, I’ll share:

This episode is your single source of truth to understand why you should start using Claude Code as a non-technical person and how to set it up so you can start automating your work.

Now.

Most AI tools still live in the browser.

You ask a question, you get an answer, you copy-paste, and context is lost almost immediately.

Claude Code breaks that pattern.

The core reason for the hype is simple: Claude is exceptionally good at reasoning over real codebases and projects, not just isolated snippets.

It can read large files without falling apart, understand how different parts of a project connect, and follow multi-step instructions without drifting off into hallucinations.

Just as importantly, Claude Code lives inside the workflow. It sees your actual files, your folder structure, and your previous changes. You don’t have to re-explain context or paste half a repo into a chat window. Claude becomes persistent.

And maybe the most underrated feature: it’s boring in the best possible way.

Claude Code doesn’t try to be overly agentic. It doesn’t randomly rewrite half your project or deploy things you didn’t ask for. It does exactly what you tell it to do and shows you what changed.

That predictability is why serious users trust it.

But to be clear: Claude Code isn’t the only option. If anything, the opposite is true: We’re spoiled for choice.

There are endless comparison tables listing features, benchmarks, and pros and cons. But in practice, most of those miss the point.

What really differentiates these tools is not raw intelligence or speed. It’s how they behave once a project starts to evolve.

A useful way to think about this is gravity.

Gravity, in this context, means: How strongly the work wants to stay in one place as it changes over time.

Take the current generation of vibecoding tools. They all promise fast progress but they create very different kinds of projects.

Here are some that I tested:

Lovable is optimized for fast ideation. You get something concrete almost immediately, but the work rarely settles. Projects are easy to start and easy to abandon. Gravity is very low.

Replit adds execution. Files persist, things run, and projects can live for weeks or months. That creates some gravity but not enough to naturally support deep iteration. Gravity is medium.

Cursor is built for sustained development. It centers everything around the project itself: files, diffs, structure, constraints. Progress accumulates. Decisions leave traces. Gravity is high.

Claude Code fits naturally into this high-gravity end of the spectrum.

It increases project gravity by anchoring the AI directly to the work:

Instead of bouncing between chats, docs, and scripts, the project becomes the center and Claude adapts around it.

The same gravity lens applies when you look at the big general-purpose models.

ChatGPT is excellent at producing answers. It’s fast, flexible, and often brilliant but the work itself doesn’t stick. Each task lives in its own conversational bubble. Gravity is low.

Gemini is strong at thinking. It’s particularly good at synthesis, framing, and connecting ideas. That gives it more staying power, but projects still tend to float rather than settle. Gravity is medium.

Claude Code, again, plays a different game. The answers are good, sometimes not flashy (though I appreciate less “Great question!” at the beginning of each reply..) but the work accumulates. Context persists. Iteration compounds. Gravity is very high.

So in summary, Claude Code is a Swiss Army knife that works across code and no-code projects. It creates true gravity and lives at the center of your project.

Earlier this week, Antrophic released Claude Cowork.

Yes, Claude Code as a name is misleading as it can be easily used by non-developers without coding skills too. But did they just rename it?

No - Claude Code is not the same as Claude Cowork.

Here’s the difference:

Claude Code is designed for continuity.

It treats the project as the source of truth: files, structure, constraints, and change history. You move forward deliberately, one step at a time, and progress compounds. This makes it the right choice when the work needs to hold together over time.

Use Claude Code when:

Claude Cowork is designed for divergence.

It creates parallel lines of thinking, different perspectives, and alternative approaches. That makes it powerful early on — but inherently less stable once execution begins.

Use Claude Cowork when:

I’ll explore both in the next few weeks but will likely focus on Claude Code for my automation experiments.

Claude Code can be used in the browser or in the terminal, and the difference matters more than it seems.

The browser is fine for quick interactions: reviewing snippets, asking one-off questions, or exploring ideas. But it’s inherently lightweight. Context is fragile, state is implicit, and the work tends to dissolve once the tab is closed.

The terminal changes the dynamic. Once Claude lives next to your files, the interaction stops being conversational and starts being operational. Claude can see what exists, what changed, and what didn’t.

To stick to our comparison above, the terminal dramatically increases gravity, and that’s the key reason why we like Claude Code.

An IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is simply a place where files, structure, history, and tools come together. You use it not because you’re “coding,” but because it makes complex work visible and manageable.

Compared to the terminal, an IDE adds context. You can see the shape of a project, track changes as they happen, and understand how pieces fit together without holding everything in your head.

The terminal is fast and precise. It’s ideal for power users who already know where they’re going. An IDE trades a bit of speed for clarity.

The difference isn’t about capability. It’s about ergonomics: the terminal optimizes for speed, the IDE optimizes for understanding.

I recorded this quick step-by-step guide for you.

Claude Code isn’t a buzzword.

It actually changes the way we work.

There’s no reason for you to repeat a task anymore.

In the next episodes, I’ll share how I use Claude Code to create workflow automations from natural language descriptions, leverage Claude Code skills for repetitive tasks, and a lot more.

Stay driven,
Andre

PS: Reserve your seat for our Virtual DDVC Summit 2026 where expert speakers will share their workflows, tool stacks, and discuss the latest insights about AI for VC