Welcome & Course Roadmap
Welcome to Mastering Claude Opus 4.6. This course will take you from understanding the fundamentals of the Claude API to building and deploying production-grade AI applications.
What You'll Build
By the end of this course, you will have built:
- A conversational AI assistant with tool use and memory
- A document analysis pipeline leveraging the 1M token context window
- An autonomous research agent using extended thinking
- A multi-agent code review system with orchestrator-worker patterns
- A production-ready AI application with rate limiting, caching, and monitoring
Course Structure
| Chapter | Focus Area | Key Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundations | Understand Opus 4.6 capabilities and set up your environment |
| 2 | API Deep Dive | Master the Messages API, streaming, and conversation design |
| 3 | Extended Thinking | Build applications that leverage deep reasoning |
| 4 | 1M Context Window | Process and analyze massive documents |
| 5 | Tool Use | Create AI assistants that take real actions |
| 6 | Agentic Workflows | Build reliable autonomous agents |
| 7 | Multi-Agent Systems | Coordinate teams of specialized agents |
| 8 | Production Apps | Ship real applications with proper architecture |
| 9 | Enterprise Integration | Deploy securely at scale |
| 10 | Career Mastery | Advanced patterns and career strategy |
Prerequisites
- Programming experience in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript
- Basic API knowledge — you've made HTTP requests before
- Command line familiarity — comfortable in a terminal
- An Anthropic API key (we'll set this up in Lesson 4)
How to Get the Most From This Course
- Code along — every lesson includes working examples. Type them out, don't just copy-paste
- Experiment — modify the examples, break things, try your own ideas
- Build the projects — each chapter ends with a hands-on project that synthesizes what you've learned
- Join the community — share your projects and ask questions
Let's begin by understanding what makes Claude Opus 4.6 special.