The Claude Code setup that replaced my IDE

Matthew Sutherland

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19h • General Discussion 💬

I stopped opening IDE's

The setup

Two windows:

1. Claude Desktop App (for research, planning, long conversations)

2. Mac terminal running Claude Code (for all execution)

Why this works better than running Claude Code inside an IDE

When Claude Code runs inside an IDE terminal, every file operation passes through the editor's plugin layer: file watchers, extensions, lock conflicts.

In a standalone terminal, Claude Code talks directly to your filesystem. No interception, no translation.

The practical difference:

- File writes are instant. No "file changed externally, reload?" dialogs.

- Git operations run clean. No source control extension competing for the same lock.

- Shell access is unfiltered. Package installs, curl, deployment scripts, SSH tunnels. All native.

- No extension memory overhead. My terminal session uses a fraction of what VSCode was consuming.

- MCP servers (GitHub, databases, APIs) wire in directly without fighting IDE plugin architecture.

What a real session looks like

Last week I built a Cloudflare Worker with KV bindings. One terminal window:

- Claude Code scaffolded the project structure

- Wrote the Worker handler, wrangler config, and KV namespace bindings

- Ran wrangler deploy

- Tested the endpoint with curl

- Fixed a routing issue based on the error response

- Committed and pushed

Total time: under 20 minutes. I never typed a line of code. I described what I needed, reviewed the output, approved the operations.

You're not coding in a terminal. You're directing an agent that codes for you.

How to set this up (10 minutes)

If you have a Mac and Claude Pro or Max:

(On a PC? Your setup instructions are in the attached file.)

1. Install Claude Code: open terminal, run the install command from Anthropic's docs.

2. Run "claude" in any project directory. You're in an agentic session.

3. Open Claude Desktop App alongside for planning, research, and longer thinking conversations.

Optional but useful:

- Set up a .claude directory in your project with a CLAUDE.md file. Same idea as onboarding docs, but for your coding agent. Persistent instructions about your project, coding standards, and preferences.

- Claude Code handles commits, branches, and PRs. You approve each operation before it executes. Nothing destructive runs without your explicit sign-off.

When you'd still open an IDE

There are times I still use it:

- Visual diffing on complex merge conflicts

- Large files where I want to manually scroll and read

- Heavy debugging that benefits from breakpoints

But those are maybe 5% of my sessions now. The other 95% never leave the terminal.

Why the IDE becomes optional

Terminal vs. IDE is the wrong frame. The question is how many layers sit between the agent and the filesystem.

Claude Code already reads your codebase, runs tests, and commits changes. The IDE becomes a viewer for work that already happened in the terminal.

Try it for two days. That's enough to know.

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What's your current Claude Code setup? Running it inside an IDE or standalone?