anthropics/Claude Cookbooks
OfficialA collection of notebooks and recipes showcasing fun and effective ways of using Claude, maintained by Anthropic.
Anthropic's official collection of Jupyter notebooks and code examples for building with Claude. Covers RAG pipelines, classification, tool use, vision, and prompt engineering. Over 37,700 stars, MIT licensed, and actively maintained by Anthropic engineers.
Best for
Our Review
The Claude Cookbooks is Anthropic's official repository of Jupyter notebooks and code recipes showing developers how to build with Claude. Maintained directly by Anthropic engineers, every example is accurate, production-tested, and updated alongside the Claude API. With over 37,700 stars and thousands of forks, it is the most popular and trusted Anthropic resource on GitHub.
What Claude Cookbooks Does
- •Classification systems Build text and data classifiers using Claude with practical examples like insurance support ticket categorization across multiple categories.
- •Retrieval Augmented Generation Implement RAG pipelines with external knowledge bases, covering chunking strategies, embedding approaches, and retrieval optimization for accurate Claude responses.
- •Tool use and integration Connect Claude to external tools and APIs through function calling, with real-world examples including customer service agents, calculator integration, and SQL query generation.
- •Vision capabilities Use Claude's multimodal features to process images, read charts and graphs, extract content from forms, and interpret complex visual data through Jupyter notebooks.
- •Text summarization Deploy effective summarization patterns for long documents, meeting notes, research papers, and multi-document synthesis at scale.
- •Advanced prompt engineering Enable JSON mode output, implement prompt caching for cost savings, and build automated content moderation filters for production applications.
- •PDF processing and sub-agent architectures Parse PDFs into Claude-readable text and explore multi-agent patterns using Haiku as a sub-agent alongside Opus for complex workflows.
Getting Started
Install the Anthropic Python SDK with pip install anthropic, set your ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable, and clone the repository. Each notebook is self-contained and ready to run in Jupyter, VS Code, or Google Colab. Start with the fundamentals notebooks before moving to advanced integrations.
Limitations
The cookbooks are primarily written in Python and Jupyter Notebook format, which means developers working in other languages will need to translate the patterns themselves. Some notebooks are dated and may reference older Claude model versions like Claude 2 or early Claude 3 releases rather than the latest Sonnet or Opus variants. There are no official releases or version tags, so tracking which notebook version works with which API version requires checking the commit history. The repository focuses on API-level integration rather than framework-level abstractions, so developers looking for ready-made LangChain or LlamaIndex integrations should look elsewhere. Third-party integration examples like Pinecone are community-contributed and may not receive the same update cadence as core Anthropic content.
Our Verdict
For Vibe Builders: This repo assumes you know Python and Jupyter Notebook basics. If you are a non-technical builder curious about what Claude can do, you will find the concepts interesting but will struggle to run the notebooks without coding knowledge. Skip if you want a no-code interface -- use platform.claude.com directly instead.
For Basic Users: The Claude Cookbooks is a developer-first resource. If you want to understand Claude's capabilities -- vision, classification, summarization, tool use -- the notebook README and descriptions give a good overview. But actually running the examples requires API keys, Python, and Jupyter. Skip if you want guided tutorials with zero setup, and instead start with the Anthropic Academy guides at anthropic.com/learn.
For Developers: This is the essential starting point for building with Claude. The notebooks cover production patterns: RAG with proper chunking, tool use with external APIs, vision for document extraction, JSON mode for structured output, and prompt caching for cost optimization. At 37,700+ stars with MIT licensing and active maintenance from Anthropic engineers, it is the authoritative reference implementation. The code works out of the box and directly maps to the Claude API. Your next step after these is exploring the Claude Platform docs at platform.claude.com for the latest model capabilities.
Frequently Asked Questions
What programming language are the Claude Cookbooks written in?
The Claude Cookbooks are primarily written in Python using Jupyter Notebook format. Each notebook contains executable code cells alongside markdown explanations. The concepts and API patterns can be adapted to any programming language that supports the Claude API, including JavaScript, TypeScript, and Go, but you will need to translate the examples yourself.
Do I need a paid Anthropic API account to use the examples?
You need an Anthropic API key to run the code examples, which you can sign up for free at anthropic.com. The API uses a pay-per-use pricing model, so you are charged only for the tokens you consume. Each notebook is designed to be efficient with API calls, but you should monitor usage during testing to avoid unexpected costs from large context windows.
How often is the Claude Cookbooks repository updated?
The repository is actively maintained by Anthropic, with recent commits as recent as April 2026. However, there are no formal versioned releases or tags, so you need to check the commit history to find the most recent updates to specific notebooks. The most actively maintained sections are the capabilities and tool use directories, while some third-party integrations may lag behind.
Can I use the Claude Cookbooks code in my commercial project?
Yes, the Claude Cookbooks are licensed under the MIT License, which is one of the most permissive open-source licenses available. You can freely use, modify, and distribute the code in personal and commercial projects. The only requirement is that you include the original copyright notice and license text in your distribution or derived works.
How does the Claude Cookbooks differ from the official Claude documentation?
The official Claude documentation at docs.anthropic.com covers API reference specifications, model capabilities, and general guidance. The Claude Cookbooks complement this with hands-on, copy-pasteable examples organized by use case -- classification, RAG, tool use, vision, and more. The docs tell you what the API can do; the cookbooks show you exactly how to implement it with working code.
What is Claude Cookbooks?
Anthropic's official collection of Jupyter notebooks and code examples for building with Claude. Covers RAG pipelines, classification, tool use, vision, and prompt engineering. Over 37,700 stars, MIT licensed, and actively maintained by Anthropic engineers.
How do I install Claude Cookbooks?
Visit the GitHub repository at https://github.com/anthropics/claude-cookbooks for installation instructions.
What license does Claude Cookbooks use?
Check the repository for license details.
What are alternatives to Claude Cookbooks?
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Great for: Pro Vibe Builders
Skip if: You need something more beginner-friendly or guided
Open source — source code publicly visible
Anyone can inspect exactly what this repo does on GitHub before using it.
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