What you'll learn
Your instructor
Marcus Williams
Developer Experience Engineer, Anthropic
Marcus builds the tools and documentation that help developers.
Syllabus
Your First API Call
Install the SDK, make your first call to Claude, and build multi-turn conversations — with a preview of the document research agent you'll build as your capstone.
Streaming and Real-Time Responses
Stream tokens to users in real time using SSE events and SDK helpers, including handling tool calls and thinking blocks mid-stream.
Tool Use — Giving Claude Hands
Define tools with JSON Schema, handle the tool-use loop, use server-side tools like web search, and build agentic loops for multi-step task completion.
Documents, Vision, and Citations
Send images and PDFs to Claude, get grounded citations back with precise source references, and build multi-document analysis pipelines.
Thinking, Caching, and Cost Control
Enable extended thinking for complex reasoning, cache prompts for 90% input savings, route between models, and handle production error patterns.
Project — Document Research Agent
Build a document research agent that combines every API feature: multi-turn conversations, streaming, tool use, PDF citations, extended thinking, and cost optimization.
