BeginnerИнженерияclaude

Anthropic API Fundamentals: Official Course

Anthropic's official API fundamentals course: first request, Messages API format, model selection, generation parameters, streaming, and vision. Real Python code from the Anthropic team.

6modules

6lessons

120 mintotal time

Developers getting started with Claude APIaudience

Module 1

Getting Started with Claude SDK

Install the SDK, authenticate, and make your first request to the Claude API.

First Steps: Installation and Your First Request

How to install the anthropic SDK, securely store your API key with dotenv, and send your first request to Claude — from installation to printing the response.

20 min

Module 2

Messages API Format

Message structure, response object, few-shot prompting, and building a chatbot.

Messages API: Format, Response Object, and Chatbot

The messages structure with role and content, the Message object (id, stop_reason, usage), prefilling Claude's response with an assistant message, few-shot prompting, and building a simple chatbot.

20 min

Module 3

Claude Models

Comparing models by speed and capabilities, and criteria for choosing the right one.

Choosing a Model: Speed, Capabilities, Cost

The Claude 3 and 3.5 family: comparing Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus by latency and quality on real tasks, and how to choose a model for your use case.

20 min

Module 4

Generation Parameters

max_tokens, temperature, stop_sequences, and system prompt — precise control over Claude's behavior.

max_tokens, temperature, stop_sequences, and system prompt

How max_tokens limits generation, temperature controls randomness, stop_sequences halt at the right spot, and system prompt sets the role and context.

20 min

Module 5

Streaming

Token-by-token streaming to improve Time to First Token and user experience.

Streaming: Real-Time Responses

How stream=True changes API behavior, SSE event types (MessageStart, ContentBlockDelta, MessageDelta), Time to First Token, the client.messages.stream helper, and custom event handlers.

20 min

Module 6

Vision: Working with Images

Multimodal prompts: images from files and URLs, multiple images, prompting tips.

Vision: Images in Claude Prompts

The image content block format with base64 encoding, passing images from files and URLs via httpx, multiple images in one request, and few-shot prompting for structured output from images.

20 min