John

Senior Cloud Engineer & Technical Lead

Claude Code Best Practices: Lessons Learned from Real-World Development

August 01, 2025

I’ve been using Claude Code extensively for the past few months, and honestly, I wish someone had written down all the non-obvious tricks and gotchas when I started. Like most developers, I jumped in thinking “it’s just another AI tool” and immediately ran into context limits, permission dialogs, and workflow inefficiencies that made me question whether this was actually helping or just creating more overhead.

After working through dozens of projects and automating everything from CI/CD pipelines to complex refactoring tasks, I’ve discovered a set of practices that fundamentally changed how productive I am with Claude Code. These aren’t the basic “how to write a prompt” tips you’ll find everywhere - these are the real-world optimizations that separate casual users from power users.

Context Management: The Foundation

The biggest game-changer was understanding Claude Code’s context management system. I was constantly hitting the 200k token limit and losing important project context mid-conversation.

CLAUDE.md Files: Your State Management System

The most powerful feature that nobody talks about enough is the CLAUDE.md file system. You can place these files in two locations:

  1. Project-level: ./CLAUDE.md in your repository root
  2. Global: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md in your home directory

These files get automatically included in every conversation, giving Claude persistent context about your project structure, conventions, and preferences. I keep project-specific architectural decisions, coding standards, and deployment instructions in the project file, while my global file contains my general development preferences and workflow patterns.

Here’s what I include in my project-level CLAUDE.md:

## Architecture Overview
- Next.js 14 with App Router
- PostgreSQL with Prisma ORM
- Docker containers for local development

## Development Commands
- `npm run dev` - local development server
- `npm run test:watch` - continuous testing
- `docker-compose up -d` - start local services

Context Limits and Management Commands

When you hit the context limit, don’t restart the conversation. Use these commands:

  • /cle - Clears conversation history but preserves CLAUDE.md context
  • /compact - Summarizes the conversation to fit within limits

I use /compact when I’m in the middle of complex debugging sessions and need to preserve the problem-solving context, but /cle when moving to a new feature or task.

Permission Management: Stop the Dialog Hell

The permission system initially frustrated me until I learned these patterns:

  • Read operations: Auto-approved by default
  • Write operations: Require approval unless configured otherwise
  • Shift+Tab: Quick auto-accept for trusted operations
  • Always-approved commands: Configure for your commonly used tools

I set up always-approved permissions for git, npm, docker, and gh commands since these are core to my workflow. This eliminated 90% of the permission dialogs that were breaking my flow state.

CLI Integration Over MCP

Early on, I tried setting up various MCP servers for different tools. What I discovered is that Claude Code works best when you have well-documented CLI tools already installed. Instead of fighting with custom MCP configurations, I focused on ensuring my environment had:

  • GitHub CLI (gh) for repository operations
  • AWS CLI for cloud operations
  • Docker CLI for container management
  • Standard Unix tools with good documentation

Claude Code can read command documentation and man pages, making it incredibly effective with any CLI tool that follows standard conventions.

Workflow Optimization Techniques

The Planning-First Approach

I learned to always start complex tasks with analysis and planning rather than jumping straight into implementation. My typical workflow now:

  1. Ask Claude to analyze the current state
  2. Request a proposed implementation plan
  3. Review and approve the plan before execution
  4. Monitor the to-do list as work progresses

This prevents the “scope creep” problem where a simple change turns into a massive refactoring because we didn’t think through the implications upfront.

“Vibe Coding” with Quality Gates

Claude Code is excellent at maintaining code quality standards automatically. I rely on it to:

  • Write tests first (TDD approach)
  • Run TypeScript checks and linting
  • Make regular commits with semantic messages
  • Catch architectural issues early

The key is setting up your project with the right tooling and then trusting Claude to use it consistently.

Screenshot Debugging

One of the most underutilized features is Claude’s multimodal capabilities. When I encounter UI issues or complex error states, I take screenshots and share them directly. Claude can analyze visual problems, understand error dialog context, and even spot CSS layout issues that are hard to describe in text.

Advanced Techniques for Power Users

Multiple Instances and Session Management

I run multiple Claude Code instances using terminal tabs or T-Mux sessions. This lets me:

  • Keep one session for ongoing feature development
  • Use another for debugging and investigation
  • Maintain a third for documentation and testing

Each session maintains its own context, so I can work on different aspects of a project without context pollution.

Escape Sequences for Flow Control

  • Single Escape: Stops current execution and redirects to new task
  • Double Escape: Continues current task after interruption

These are crucial when Claude starts going down the wrong path or when you need to provide additional context mid-execution.

Headless Automation with the SDK

For CI/CD integration, I use Claude’s SDK for headless operations:

// GitHub Actions integration
const response = await claude.analyze({
  context: prDiff,
  task: "review code changes and suggest improvements"
});

This allows me to integrate Claude into automated workflows without manual intervention.

Staying Current with Rapid Updates

Claude Code updates frequently, and the capabilities are expanding fast. I check the GitHub changelog monthly and experiment with new features in non-critical projects first.

The /slashmodel command shows current model information, and I’ve noticed significant improvements in reasoning quality with Claude 4’s “thinking hard” mode for complex architectural decisions.

Key Learnings

  • Context management is everything: Master CLAUDE.md files and context commands before focusing on advanced features
  • Permission setup pays dividends: Spend time configuring always-approved commands for your core tools
  • CLI-first approach works best: Invest in good CLI tooling rather than fighting with custom MCP servers
  • Plan before implementing: Always analyze and propose plans for complex changes
  • Multiple sessions for complex projects: Use separate instances for different types of work
  • Screenshots are underutilized: Visual debugging is incredibly powerful for UI and error analysis
  • Headless automation enables scale: SDK integration allows Claude to work in your CI/CD pipelines
  • Stay current with updates: The tool evolves rapidly, and new capabilities can transform your workflow

The biggest mindset shift was treating Claude Code not as a simple chat interface, but as a development environment that requires thoughtful setup and workflow design. Once you invest in the proper configuration and understand the advanced features, it becomes an incredibly powerful force multiplier for complex development tasks.

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