44  44. Navigating the Claude Documentation (and Keeping Up)

Claude Code gets a new version almost every day. A book page, a video tutorial, or a chatbot’s answer about Claude Code can be out of date within weeks. This page shows you where the official documentation lives, how it is organized, how to follow what changed, and a step-by-step recipe for finding an answer and checking it.

44.1 Four documentation sites

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Claude Code Docs · Claude Platform docs · Claude.ai Documentation · Claude Help Center

Anthropic splits its documentation across four websites:

Site What it covers Go there when…
code.claude.com/docs (Claude Code Docs) Claude Code everywhere it runs: terminal, editors, Desktop, cloud, phone; settings, plugins, and the Agent SDK You have a question about Claude Code. This is the site you’ll use most.
platform.claude.com/docs (Claude Platform docs) The API: models, prices, API reference, SDKs, Managed Agents, API release notes You want model details or prices, or you are writing code that calls the API.
claude.com/docs (Claude.ai Documentation) Connectors, skills, and plugins for the Claude apps; Cowork; Claude Tag; Claude for Microsoft 365 You are customizing the Claude apps.
support.claude.com (Help Center) How-to articles for the apps; plans, billing, and usage limits; privacy; the apps’ release notes You have an account, plan, or billing question.

Two more official sites: claude.com/pricing for plans and prices, and anthropic.com/news for announcements. Older tutorials may link to former addresses such as docs.anthropic.com or support.anthropic.com; those now redirect (automatically forward) to the sites above.

44.2 A tour of the Claude Code docs

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Claude Code Docs · CLI reference · Commands

The tabs across the top of code.claude.com/docs are:

  • Getting started: overview, quickstart, the changelog, core concepts (how Claude Code works, the .claude folder, the context window), everyday use (memory, sessions, best practices), and platforms and integrations.
  • Build with Claude Code: running agents in parallel, MCP, skills, artifacts, automation (hooks, scheduled tasks), and troubleshooting.
  • Plugins: using, creating, and sharing plugins and mods.
  • Administration: setting up Claude Code for a company: sign-in, deployment, costs, security, and data.
  • Configuration: settings, permissions, models, and the interface.
  • Reference: exact lists of commands, flags, environment variables, and tools.
  • Agent SDK: building your own agents with Claude Code’s engine.
  • What’s New: weekly highlights.
  • Resources: legal and compliance information.

Bookmark the reference pages. They are long, but complete lists are exactly what you need when a tutorial mentions a command you don’t recognize:

Page Look up…
CLI reference Options for the claude command itself, such as --model or --continue
Commands Every / command you can type inside a session, such as /usage
Settings and All settings Settings files, and every key in settings.json
Tools reference The tools Claude can use, such as Read, Edit, and Bash
Interactive mode Keyboard shortcuts
Environment variables Variables such as ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
Glossary Definitions of terms such as “agentic loop” and “compaction”
Troubleshooting Where to start when something goes wrong

Every page of the Claude Code docs also has a search box (Cmd+K on a Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows) and an Ask Assistant button that answers questions using the docs. The Platform docs call theirs “Ask Docs”.

44.3 The changelog: what changed, and when

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Claude Code changelog · Claude Code repository on GitHub

A changelog is a list of every change made to a piece of software, grouped by version number, newest first. Claude Code’s changelog is in two places:

Version numbers have three parts, such as 2.1.291. New versions come out very often: 2.1.290 was released on October 5, 2026, and 2.1.291 the next day. Here is the 2.1.291 entry from the docs:

2.1.291 · October 6, 2026
 * Fixed a regression in 2.1.290 where cloud sessions could drop answers to permission prompts
 * Fixed a regression in 2.1.288 where the last messages of a session could be lost when quitting

How to read an entry:

  • Each line starts with a verb. Added means a new feature; Changed means something now works differently (read these carefully); Improved and Fixed are improvements and bug fixes; Removed means a feature is gone. A regression is something that used to work and broke in a newer version.
  • Some lines begin with a tag, such as [VSCode] or Windows:, meaning they apply only there.

To compare with your own copy, check which version you have:

claude --version

Output:

2.1.291 (Claude Code)

Inside a session, /release-notes opens the changelog in a version picker. Search the changelog for a feature’s name when a tutorial or an AI answer doesn’t match your screen: you may be on a different version, or the feature may have been renamed. For example, the changelog for version 2.1.144 (May 19, 2026) says that /extra-usage was renamed /usage-credits.

44.4 Other places to keep up

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: What’s new · Claude apps release notes · Claude Platform release notes · Claude Desktop changelog · Claude status

Source What it covers
What’s new (Claude Code Docs) A weekly digest of the most notable Claude Code features, with demos. It is selective, not complete, and it can lag: on October 6, 2026, the newest digest covered September 7–11.
Claude apps release notes (Help Center) Dated changes to claude.ai, the desktop and mobile apps, Cowork, and plans
Claude Platform release notes Dated changes to the API, new models, and model retirements
Claude Desktop changelog Dated versions of the Claude Desktop app, including which Claude Code version its Code tab bundles (it can differ from your CLI version)
Anthropic news and Claude articles Announcements and product news
status.claude.com Whether claude.ai, the API, or Claude Code is having an outage right now
Claude Academy Free courses, such as Claude Code 101 and Claude Code in Action

(You may also find the older “Anthropic Academy” course site, anthropic.skilljar.com, which is still online.)

44.5 Ask Claude Code about Claude Code

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Ask Claude about its capabilities · Built-in subagents · Commands

  • /help lists the available commands.
  • You can simply ask, for example: how do I create a custom skill? The docs say Claude has built-in access to the Claude Code documentation, the latest version of it, whatever version of Claude Code you have installed. Behind the scenes, Claude may hand such questions to a built-in helper subagent (a separate assistant Claude can call on) named claude-code-guide.
  • /powerup offers short interactive lessons, and /doctor checks your setup and suggests fixes.

Two cautions: the answer describes the latest version, which may be newer than yours (compare with claude --version), and it is still an AI answer, so check anything important.

44.6 Give the docs to an AI: .md pages and llms.txt

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Claude Code Docs · Claude Platform docs

  • Add .md to the end of a docs page’s address to get the page as plain Markdown text, for example https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog.md. This works on all four sites. Plain text is easy to save, search, or hand to an AI (“read this page first, then answer”). Many pages also have a Copy page button.
  • llms.txt is an index of every page on a site, one line each, made for AI tools: https://code.claude.com/docs/llms.txt and https://platform.claude.com/llms.txt.

Because the .md version is plain text, you can search it from the terminal with the tools from Searching, Counting, and Sorting:

curl -sL https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog.md | grep -n "usage-credits" | head -5

This downloads the changelog and shows the first five lines that mention usage-credits, each with its line number.

44.7 When the docs aren’t enough: a recipe

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Troubleshooting · Claude Code issues on GitHub

The docs are good but not always complete, and answers from AI models about Claude Code are often outdated: a model learns from data collected months before you use it, while Claude Code changes every week. When you can’t find an answer, or don’t trust the one you found, work through these steps:

  1. Note your setup: claude --version, your operating system, and how you signed in (/status shows your version and account).
  2. Search the official docs: use the search box or Ask Assistant, then check the reference pages (Commands, CLI reference, Settings).
  3. Search the changelog for the feature’s name, to find out when it was added or changed.
  4. Ask Claude Code itself. Treat the answer as a lead, not as proof.
  5. Search GitHub issues at github.com/anthropics/claude-code/issues for your exact error message. Issues show known bugs and workarounds, but comments there are not official answers.
  6. Check the community (the official Claude Discord, forums, blog posts) last, and look at the date of everything you read.
  7. Test it yourself in a safe place, such as a practice folder or a new Git branch. What your version actually does wins.
  8. Write down what you found, with the date and version.

An example of why several sources matter: an older tutorial tells you to run claude --remote "fix the bug". claude --help doesn’t list --remote, but it does list --cloud. The cloud sessions docs page explains that --remote is the older, deprecated (being phased out) spelling of --cloud. Yet on October 6, 2026, searching the changelog for --cloud finds nothing: not every change gets a changelog entry.

To report a bug yourself, use /bug inside Claude Code or open a GitHub issue. For account and billing problems, contact Anthropic support through the Help Center instead.

As of Oct 6, 2026 · Official docs: Connect to MCP servers

The Claude Code docs also run an MCP server (a service that gives Claude extra tools; see MCP Servers) with full-text search over the docs. The official MCP quickstart uses it as its first example:

claude mcp add --transport http claude-code-docs https://code.claude.com/docs/mcp

After that, you can ask: “Use the claude-code-docs server to look up what MCP_TIMEOUT does.” The quickstart also shows how to remove it again with claude mcp remove claude-code-docs.

44.8 Key takeaways

  • Claude Code questions go to code.claude.com/docs; API questions to platform.claude.com/docs; account and billing questions to support.claude.com.
  • The changelog is the dated record of every version; compare it with claude --version.
  • Treat tutorials and AI answers as leads: check the official docs and the date, then test.

Practice Questions

Easy

Question 1 · Short answer

What is a changelog? Where can you find Claude Code’s changelog? Give both locations.

A changelog is a list of all the changes made to a piece of software (new features, changes, and bug fixes), grouped by version, newest first. Claude Code’s changelog is at https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog (with release dates) and in the file CHANGELOG.md in the GitHub repository https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code (same entries, without dates).

Question 2 · Matching

Match each question with the site that answers it best.

Question Site
1. How do I cancel my Pro subscription? A. code.claude.com/docs
2. What does the /rewind command do? B. platform.claude.com/docs
3. How much does Sonnet 5.5 cost per million tokens through the API? C. support.claude.com
4. How does an admin set up Claude Tag in Slack? D. claude.com/docs

1 → C (account and billing questions go to the Help Center), 2 → A (Claude Code), 3 → B (API prices and models), 4 → D (Claude Tag is documented on claude.com/docs).

Question 3 · Write the command

Write the command that shows which version of Claude Code is installed on your computer.

claude --version

It prints something like 2.1.291 (Claude Code). Inside a session, /status also shows the version.

Question 4 · True or false

The CHANGELOG.md file on GitHub shows the release date of every version.

False. The GitHub file lists versions and their changes but no dates. The changelog page in the docs (code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog) is generated from that file and adds the release dates.

Question 5 · Multiple choice

A tutorial mentions a / command you have never seen. Which docs page lists every command you can type inside a Claude Code session?

  1. CLI reference
  2. Commands
  3. Glossary
  4. What’s new

b. The Commands reference lists every built-in / command and bundled skill. The CLI reference (a) covers options for the claude command itself (such as --model), the Glossary (c) defines terms, and What’s new (d) highlights only the most notable features of each week.

Question 6 · Short answer

Claude Code suddenly stops answering, and so does claude.ai. Which website tells you whether Anthropic is having an outage?

The status page, https://status.claude.com. It shows the current state of claude.ai, the API, Claude Code, and other services. (The older address status.anthropic.com redirects there.)

Medium

Question 7 · Scenario

A tutorial from early 2026 tells Maria to type /extra-usage to buy more usage, but she can’t find that command. Which two official sources should she check, and what will she find?

  1. The Commands reference page, which lists /usage-credits and notes that it was previously called /extra-usage.
  2. The changelog: searching it for extra-usage shows that version 2.1.144 (May 19, 2026) renamed “extra usage” to “usage credits” and /extra-usage to /usage-credits.

The tutorial is simply older than the rename.

Question 8 · Short answer

Here are four real lines from the changelog for version 2.1.290 (October 5, 2026):

- Added `claude attach <name>` and `claude logs <name>`: part of a session name works in place of the id
- Changed the Bash tool to ask for permission before running `pyright`, which is no longer treated as a read-only command
- [VSCode] Fixed the branch switch dialog offering to switch when it could not check for uncommitted changes
- Fixed `/rewind` not listing a prompt sent while Claude was still working
  1. Which line is a new feature?
  2. Which line could change what you see during a normal session, and how?
  3. Which line applies only to one surface, and how can you tell?
  1. The first line (“Added …”): claude attach and claude logs now accept part of a session name.
  2. The second line (“Changed …”): pyright is no longer treated as a harmless read-only command, so, depending on your permission mode, Claude Code may now ask you before running it, where before it ran without asking.
  3. The third line: the [VSCode] tag means it applies only to the VS Code extension.

Question 9 · Write the command

Write one terminal command that downloads the plain-text (Markdown) version of the Claude Code changelog and shows only the lines that mention teleport, with line numbers.

curl -sL https://code.claude.com/docs/en/changelog.md | grep -n "teleport"

Adding .md to the page’s address returns plain Markdown. curl -sL downloads it quietly, following redirects, and grep -n prints matching lines with their line numbers. (Adding | head limits the output to the first few matches.)

Question 10 · Compare

How is the weekly What’s new digest different from the changelog? Why shouldn’t you rely on What’s new alone?

What’s new is a selective weekly summary of the most notable features, with demos and explanations. The changelog is the complete list of changes in every version, including small fixes. What’s new skips most changes, and it can lag behind: on October 6, 2026, its newest digest covered September 7–11, while the changelog listed a version released that same day.

Question 11 · Multiple choice

A developer’s program uses an older Claude model through the API and wants to know when that model will be retired. Where should she look?

  1. The Claude Code changelog
  2. The Claude Platform release notes and model deprecation pages on platform.claude.com/docs
  3. The Claude apps release notes in the Help Center
  4. The What’s new weekly digest

b. API changes, new models, and model retirements are announced in the Claude Platform release notes, with details on the platform docs’ model deprecation page. The Claude Code changelog (a) and What’s new (d) cover Claude Code, and the apps release notes (c) cover claude.ai and the apps.

Question 12 · Short answer

What does adding .md to the end of a docs page’s address do, and why is it useful when you work with an AI?

It returns the page as plain Markdown text instead of a web page with menus and scripts (for example https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview.md). Plain text is easy to save, search with tools like grep, or give to an AI so that it answers from the current official page instead of from its (possibly outdated) training data.

Question 13 · Compare

What is the difference between running claude --version in your terminal and typing /release-notes inside a Claude Code session?

claude --version prints the version number you have installed (for example 2.1.291 (Claude Code)) and exits. /release-notes works inside a session and opens the changelog in a version picker, so you can read what changed in a particular version, or in all of them.

Hard

Question 14 · Ordering

Put these steps for answering a Claude Code question in the order recommended on this page:

  1. Test it yourself in a practice folder or a new Git branch
  2. Search the official docs and the reference pages
  3. Note your version, operating system, and how you signed in
  4. Search GitHub issues for the exact error message
  5. Search the changelog for the feature’s name
  6. Write down what you found, with the date and version

c → b → e → d → a → f.

Start by knowing your own setup (c), then go to the most authoritative source (b), find when things changed (e), look for known bugs (d), confirm on your own machine (a), and record the result (f). Asking Claude Code itself and checking the community fit between e and a, as leads to verify.

Question 15 · Scenario

An AI chatbot tells Sam: “To start a cloud session from your terminal, run claude --remote "update the README".” How can Sam check whether this advice is current, and what will he find?

He can run claude --help, which lists --cloud (to create a cloud session) but not --remote. The cloud sessions page in the docs explains that --remote is the older, deprecated spelling of --cloud. So the advice is out of date; the current command is:

claude --cloud "update the README"

(On October 6, 2026, searching the changelog for --cloud finds nothing, a good example of why you check several sources and test.)

Question 16 · Long answer

Give two reasons why answers from AI models about Claude Code are often out of date, and describe two habits that protect you.

Reasons:

  1. A model learns from data collected up to its training cutoff, often months before you use it, so it doesn’t know about recent versions.
  2. Claude Code changes very quickly (often a new version every day), so commands, flags, and defaults are renamed or redesigned, and old tutorials that the model learned from describe old behavior.

Habits: give the AI the current official page (for example the .md version), or ask Claude Code itself, which reads the latest docs; check the answer against the reference pages and the changelog; check your version with claude --version; and test in a safe place before relying on it.

Question 17 · Scenario

Maria reads about a feature in the Claude Code docs, but it doesn’t appear in her Claude Code. claude --version prints 2.1.250. Suggest the most likely explanation and what she should do.

The docs describe the latest version, and hers is older (2.1.291 was current on October 6, 2026). The feature was probably added after 2.1.250. She should search the changelog for the feature’s name to see which version added it, then update Claude Code (see Installing Claude Code). If her version is already new enough, the feature may depend on her plan, sign-in, or surface; the docs page usually states such requirements.

Question 18 · Long answer

Rank these sources from most to least reliable for “How does feature X work in Claude Code today?”, and explain your ranking:

  • A GitHub issue comment from another user
  • The official docs page for feature X
  • A blog post from last year
  • The changelog entry for the version that added X
  • An answer from an AI chatbot that has no access to the web

A reasonable ranking:

  1. The official docs page: written by Anthropic and kept current.
  2. The changelog entry: official and dated, but brief, and later versions may have changed the feature again.
  3. The GitHub issue comment: useful for real-world bugs and workarounds, but not official, and possibly wrong.
  4. The blog post from last year: may have been right then, but Claude Code changes weekly.
  5. The chatbot without web access: answers from training data that may be months old, and can confidently invent details.

Whatever the ranking, the final check is testing it yourself on your own version.

Question 19 · Scenario

Sam wants Claude Code to answer questions about Claude Code using the current official documentation instead of guessing. Describe three ways to do this.

  1. Just ask Claude Code. The docs say Claude has built-in access to the latest Claude Code documentation; it may use its built-in claude-code-guide subagent for such questions.
  2. Give it the page: paste a docs address ending in .md, or point it to https://code.claude.com/docs/llms.txt so it can find the right page.
  3. Connect the docs MCP server: claude mcp add --transport http claude-code-docs https://code.claude.com/docs/mcp gives Claude a search tool over the docs.

In every case, Sam should still check important answers against his own version.

Question 20 · Hands-on

Choose one Claude Code feature mentioned in this book (for example /usage, plan mode, or /loop). Find (1) its page in the official docs, (2) the changelog entries that mention it (search the .md version with grep), and (3) any open GitHub issues about it. Write a five-line summary that includes the date and your Claude Code version.

Answers vary. A good summary:

  • names the feature and links to its docs page;
  • quotes or summarizes one or two changelog lines, with their versions or dates;
  • mentions whether there are open issues (and that issues are not official answers);
  • states your own version (claude --version) and the date you checked;
  • notes anything the docs left out that you discovered by testing.

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