The Magic of Claude Code
If you've talked to me lately about AI, you've almost certainly been subject to a long soliloquy about the wonders of Claude Code. What started as a tool I ran in parallel with other tools to aid coding has turned into my full-fledged agentic operating system, supporting all kinds of workflows.
Most notably, Obsidian, the tool I use for note-taking. The difference between Obsidian and Notion or Evernote is that all the files are just plain old Markdown files stored on your computer. You can sync, style, and save them, but ultimately, it's still a text file on your hard drive. A few months ago, I realized that this fact made my Obsidian notes and research a particularly interesting target for AI coding tools. What first started with trying to open my vault in Cursor quickly moved to a sort of note-taking operating system that I grew so reliant on, I ended up standing up a server in my house so I could connect via SSH from my phone into my Claude Code + Obsidian setup and take notes, read notes, and think through things on the go.
A few weeks ago, I went on Dan Shipper's AI & I Podcast to wax poetic about my love for this setup. I did a pretty deep dive into the system I use, how it works, why it works, etc. I won't retread all those details—you can read the transcript or listen to the podcast—but I want to talk about a few other things related to Claude Code that I've come to realize since the conversation.
Why Claude Code Is Different
I've really struggled to answer this question. I'm also not sure it's better than Cursor for all things, but I do think there are a set of fairly exceptional pieces that work together in concert to make me turn to Claude Code whenever I need to build anything these days. Increasingly, that's not even about applying it to existing codebases as much as it's building entirely new things on top of its functionality (more on that in a bit).
So what's the secret? Part of it lies in how Claude Code approaches tools. As a terminal-based application, it trades accessibility for something powerful: native Unix command integration. While I typically avoid long blockquotes, the Unix Philosophy deserves an exception—Doug McIlroy's original formulation captures it perfectly:
