AI Codex

For daily Claude users

8 concepts · ~38 min

Getting more out of Claude

Eight concepts, in the right order. Each one builds on the last. By the end you'll understand how Claude actually works — and you'll get noticeably better results from it.

1

The foundation

Large Language Model

What Claude actually is under the hood — and why that changes how you interact with it.

5 min

2

How Claude's memory works

Context Window

The whiteboard metaphor: why Claude remembers everything in a conversation but nothing between them.

5 min

3

The unit of everything

Token

What tokens are, why they matter for cost, and how to think about Claude's limits in practical terms.

4 min

4

How to brief Claude

System Prompt

The most important concept for anyone building with Claude — how to shape its behavior before the conversation starts.

4 min

5

Why Claude behaves the way it does

Constitutional AI

The training method that gave Claude values instead of rules — and why that makes it more useful, not less.

5 min

6

When to trust the output

Hallucination

Why Claude sometimes gets confident things wrong — and how to design around it rather than be caught off guard.

5 min

7

Giving Claude your knowledge

RAG

How to connect Claude to your own documents, data, and information — so answers are grounded in your reality.

5 min

8

When Claude does the work

AI Agent

The shift from Claude answering questions to Claude completing tasks — what changes and what to watch for.

5 min

After this path

Go deeper on what matters to you

The glossary has every term. The articles go deeper on the ones that matter most.

Claude-specific terms →All articles →