# Building with the Claude API: a hands-on course

> Learn the Claude API from your first call to tools, RAG, caching, extended thinking, MCP and agents. Fifteen parts, each with a concept video and a hands-on build.

Source: https://devaiper.com/courses/claude-api
Published: 2026-10-08

From your first API call to agents, in fifteen parts. Every part has a short concept video, then a hands-on video where we build it live. The written version of each part appears on this site as its video goes live, with code you can copy.

## Course outline

1. Your first Claude API call (coming soon): Install, authenticate and send a message.
2. Conversations and system prompts (coming soon): Multi-turn history and steering behavior.
3. Controlling the output (coming soon): Temperature, streaming and stop sequences.
4. Structured output (coming soon): Get clean JSON every time.
5. Prompt evaluation (coming soon): Datasets, graders and a score you can improve.
6. Prompt engineering (coming soon): Clarity, examples, XML tags and thinking.
7. Tool use basics (coming soon): Let the model call your functions.
8. Tool use in practice (coming soon): Multiple tools, errors and batching.
9. RAG (coming soon): Chat with your own documents.
10. Prompt caching and cost (coming soon): Cut your bill without cutting quality.
11. Extended thinking (coming soon): When the extra tokens are worth it.
12. Images, PDFs and citations (coming soon): Vision input and sourced answers.
13. MCP (coming soon): Use and build tool servers.
14. Agents and workflows (coming soon): Which one do you actually need?
15. A Claude Code workflow (coming soon): My daily setup for coding with an agent.

## FAQ

### Do I need to know Python or TypeScript for the Claude API course?

You need to be comfortable reading code in one of them. The concepts carry over to any language with an HTTP client.

### Is the Claude API free to use?

No, API usage is billed per token. The course shows how to measure and reduce cost, including prompt caching.