How I Learned Claude Code in 5 Days (and Why I Can't Work Without It)

I didn't know how to open Claude Code five days before I became dependent on it.

I live in İzmir, Turkey. Tim Cakir — my business partner and co-founder of AI Operator — lives in Bodrum, about 3 hours away. We run the company together but work remotely most of the time.

I had just come back from a few days off with my family. Tim had been waiting.

"Come to Bodrum," he said. "I'm going to teach you Claude Code."

So I went.

Who is Tim, and why does this matter?

Tim is one of the best Claude Code users I've come across. Not because he memorizes documentation — but because he actually uses it, ships with it, and has figured out what works and what doesn't.

I'm a fast learner. Especially for things that make me curious — AI, tools, automation. So when Tim said he'd teach me, I knew I'd come back different.

What we did in 5 days

We sat down together and built our company website from scratch using Claude Code.

Not a prototype. Not a demo. The actual AI Operator website.

Before this, we were using Framer. It looked great but every change had to be done manually. Renewing a few page sections once took me 3 full days. Slow, frustrating, and didn't scale.

With Claude Code, those same changes take minutes. An hour at most.

We cancelled Framer the same week.

The workflow is simple: you tell Claude what you want, it does it. You review, tweak, direct. That's it. You're not coding — you're thinking and deciding. Claude handles the execution.

The real challenges

Limits

I was on the $20/month plan. After just a few hours of heavy use, I hit the usage ceiling. Not ideal when you're in a flow state.

Tim upgraded me to the $100/month plan on the spot. That's 5x more usage. After that, I never got fully blocked — though I do get close sometimes.

If you're going to use Claude Code seriously, don't cheap out on the plan. The $20 limit will get in your way.

Context windows (now fixed)

Earlier, after a long session, Claude would hit the context window and auto-compact. Anthropic fixed this with Opus 4.6 — it now has a 1 million token context window. Non-issue now.

What I use it for now

Everything.

• Building and updating our website
• Implementing new features
• Fixing bugs
• Thinking through problems
• Automations

I have multiple Claude Code tabs open at all times. I do nearly all of my work through it.

It's not an exaggeration to say I'm 10x more productive. Some days it feels like 100x.

The automation we built

We built an automation that monitors the Claude Code GitHub repo daily. If there's a meaningful update, it sends us a Slack message with a summary.

That's how much we care about staying current. The Anthropic team ships fast — new updates almost every day. Without this, we'd constantly be behind.

Who should use Claude Code?

Everyone. Seriously.

• Developers: it multiplies your output
• Founders and operators: build and ship without a dev
• Non-technical people: you can still use it — you just need to know what you want

The hardest part is starting. Everything after that is just problem-solving.

Tim started me. Maybe this post starts you.