## Intro [00:00] Cloud Code powered by the new Cloud 4 models produces the best AI code I've seen yet, but it does run in the terminal, which means it can be a bit intimidating at first. There's also a few quirks. So, in this video, I'll show you the top 10 essential tips you need to know to get the most out of Cloud Code. Let's go. ## Tip 1: Planning Mode [00:18] So, I'm logged into Cloud Code, and if you ever done software development before, you're going to know that a little bit of planning goes a long way. And Claude has a secret way to do this. So, if you go shift tab, you see in the bottom there, it's going to switch to auto edits, edits on. Do it one more time. Now, it's going to go to planning mode on. And what this mode does is it's not going to update your code at all. It's just going to do planning. So, let's put in here plan to build a Shopify application that enhances merchants product descriptions with AI. And in the planning mode, it's going to start doing some web searches usually, which is great cuz then you get latest information on whatever you're trying to plan to build. I notice it does much more in the planning mode than it does in normal mode. So that's a really good reason to use it. And then at the end it gives you a report when it's in planning mode. So it's going to tell you the project structure and technology stack to use, what it recommends, core features of this application, implementation steps, all that kind of good stuff. And then at the end it can say where you like to proceed. You can actually start building it or you can say no, keep planning and you get it right from there staying in planning mode. This is also great for adding a new feature to an application. And then when you're ready to leave, just shift tab again and you go back to back to normal mode. ## Tip 2: Image recognition [01:30] You can actually add images directly into cloud code. It's a really powerful feature, but there's a bit of a trick to it. So, let's take this application I have built here and say we want to get cloud code to analyze it and maybe add a feature. So I can just go take a screenshot of it and now I have a copy to my clipboard and then in cloud code you'd think on a Mac it would just be your normal command V. Clicking that nothing happens. The trick is you actually have to do a controlV which is counterintuitive. When I do that now image one comes up. So it doesn't give you a preview or anything but when you see like image number one that's the image you just copied from your clipboard. I haven't tried it out on Windows yet. It might be the same kind of trick. Maybe it's the Windows key or something, but watch out for that. But once you do get it in here, it's very powerful. Let's just say do an analysis of this application's UI and then what enhancements would you recommend. And I find this very useful for just looking at bugs in a UI or just adding a feature, adding a button somewhere. It actually is very good at reading the image. And there we go. It gives us some functionality enhancements. These are a couple things actually thinking about into the application. So it's good that I picked this up like directions integration and store hours, stuff like that. Definitely check out how cloud code can read images. It does a really good job. ## Tip 3: Init Command [02:46] One really powerful command that I think is a bit misunderstood and overlooked is the init command. So if you're in your project and you go to init, what it's going to do is look through all the files in that project and write a claw.md file or markdown file and it'll give you a comprehensive look at your whole project. It'll give you coding standards, technologies used, etc. And then we see it created the claw.md file in this directory. And then like I said, it gives you the core components, data flow, all that kind of good stuff. And I've been doing software development for a long time. This is some of the best kind of lightweight documentation you can get, especially for a smaller codebase. But the really interesting thing is it takes this claw.md file and every time you do a new chat or start a new session with claude code, it puts this into the context. So if you put this project on the side for say 6 months came back to cloud code later it would actually bring in all this and remember all this as context which is a nice head start but also you can add on to this yourself. So if there's things you want cloud code to know when it launches up for this project this is the place to do it. This is kind of like cursor rules basically. ## Tip 4: IDE Integration [03:54] If you're used to doing your coding in a code editor one thing that will really help is if you integrate a code editor with cloud code so you're not always in the terminal. It's really easy to do once you install cloud code and it detects you have an IDE. It actually automatically installs it. There's also an ID command you can run and that'll tell you what IDs you have and connect to it from there. Once you have it connected, it's going to tell you what file you're in and then has two-way communication. So, if I highlight some code, it's going to say 12 lines selected. So, it's just targeting that code to make changes on. It also lets you visually see the differences between a code change you're making. ## Tip 5: Dual Monitor workflow [04:29] So once you have cloud code hooked up with your IDE, in this case I have cursor, the next tip is to actually keep cloud code and cursor or VS code, whatever you're using for your IDE in a separate window. It's going to make it such a nice experience to code in. And to do that, all you have to do is just when you have Claude Code up, you can just right click on that terminal and say move into new window. And now you just move that to your second monitor and really do some vibe coding. ## Tip 6: Custom commands [04:56] as well as using the built-in commands in cloud code, you can actually create your own and they can do whatever you want and they're very useful. So to do that, we'll create a new directory. So you do a make directory under doclaude and then call it commands and then you create the commands by just simply creating markdown files. So this one I'm going to call doc.md and then inside of it you can put your arguments. So I'm going to say create clear thorough documentation for the arguments. So that's going be the files we pass in and then include a description usage examples and important notes for developers. And once that's created, you can just do / project colon and then the name of the command. So in this case, doc and then pass in your arguments. So we'll pass in storelocator.html. So now it's reading that input parameter. So you can make many arguments for whatever you think you can make up in terms of a command that's useful to you. So it's going to read through that and then it just gives you what you asked for basically in the prompt. So in this case is a really nice piece of documentation describing this particular file. I mean the sky's is the limit what you can do with these custom commands and they're going to save you a lot of time. ## Tip 7: thinking keyword [05:59] Cloud code actually has some keywords that tell it how much to think and they all have the word think in them. So if you say think it's actually going to reason more, spend more time chew more tokens all the way up to ultra think which if it sees that word it's really going to grind away and try to give you the very best answer. Let's try it. Let's just say Ultraink. The best way to package this Shopify application that merchants can deploy it. And there it came back with the answer. But you'll notice in this case the gray text is all the thinking tokens it used along the way. Definitely very useful to know in certain situations. If you're into AI software development like me, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter, the AI unleash news. It's the first link in the description and I hope to see you there. ## Tip 8: Escape wrong direction [06:42] I think most people know that if Claw's going in the wrong direction, like it's not really following the prompt or you can just see right away it's kind of doing the wrong thing. If you just hit the escape key in the middle at any time, you can interrupt it. But what you can also do, which is very useful, is if you hit the escape key twice, it's going to give you all the previous messages you had. And now you can go back to the one they interrupted say and it's going to clear the history and go back to that prompt which is a nice clean way basically to fork the conversation get it back on track to what you actually want it to be. One thing to keep in mind though is if you do do auto edits and the and they were accepted already and then you press the escape key and then you go back it's not going to revoke those and go back to this break point but it will take the conversation to this point. ## Tip 9: web search [07:30] Client code can look at websites and do web searches. It just doesn't do it very often, I've noticed. The exception to that is when you go into planning mode, but say you're just doing coding, you can actually just put in URLs and it will go and look at them. So, I'm going to say make this application conform to these style guides. I'm going to paste in the Shopify application design guidelines. And now it's going to go out and actually fetch all the content from that website. So, this is a great way to just bring in documentation, latest documentation you have into cloud code. Now I see has gone out to that website come back with very specific things to do to make it conform with the style guidelines like for example updating the typography to match the Shopify admin interface. So it's really got all the great information we need here. Now it's going to update the code. ## Tip 10: headless claude [08:14] All right, we're down to the last one and I find this one so useful. I use it all the time. You can actually run claude code in headless mode which means it doesn't actually load up the UI or anything. So check it out. You can just say claude in any terminal. We say claude-p for headless. That's the headless mode switch. Let's ask the question, what is the capital of Slovakia, which is going to return the response to me in the command line. And so what this means, we can use it all kinds of different places, pipe it to different files, use it to look at images, all kinds of useful functionality just by using the claw-p command. So check out this much more useful example. If I run an npm audit, which is going to tell me all the vulnerabilities with all the packers I have in my application, then take the results of that, pass them to claude, so I can do the cla again for the headless mode, and then ask it to prioritize the security vulnerabilities and describe them what's critical fixes needed, and then pipe all that to vulnerabilities.md, which should be a markdown file, which will have all that information. Now, it generated this vulnerabilities file, which gives me all the critical things I need to do like right away. For example, this one is an next.js JS authorization bypass vulnerability. So I have to get that figured out right away and then it lists the high priority and low priority from there. So I'm sure your head spinning all the different places you could use cloud code in headless mode. It's such a powerful tool to add any script, any kind of workflow. I hope you learned a thing or two. Cloud code is great and I'm going to do lots of videos on it ## Outro [09:36] coming up as well as everything else around AI software development. So if you're into that, make sure you subscribe to the channel and I hope you have an amazing day. I'll talk to you in the next one.