Anthropic documentation
Shares rank 4 of 6 online documentations by recommenders
Official, free developer documentation and courses from Anthropic, recommended as the reliable source for building with Claude. Critics say parts of it are padded with fluff and lack practical prompting guidance.
Official, free developer documentation and courses from Anthropic, recommended as the reliable source for building with Claude. Critics say parts of it are padded with fluff and lack practical prompting guidance.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Official, reliable source for Claude
“Anthropic and OpenAI both have decent stuff on there, plus their own docs have examples.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: What would you recommend a vibe coder learn about how all this works?” “the official documentation by Anthropic has been the source you'd need”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Agents need control flow, not more prompts” “I think Anthropic's docs are better.”
Comment from 16 Feb 2026 in “OpenClaw, OpenAI and the Future” - Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Harness Engineering 101: The LLM is the brain, the harness is the body”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Padded with fluff and filler
“I read OpenAI or Anthropic's documentation nowadays and it's just so full of useless junk”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “DeepSeek v4” “it was just fluff. For example there were exactly zero hints on how to do your prompts.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “A new way to reflect on how you use Claude” Lacks practical prompting guidance
“it was just fluff. For example there were exactly zero hints on how to do your prompts.”
Comment from 9 Jul 2026 in “A new way to reflect on how you use Claude” “They don't have any of these and the guide you mentioned isn't related to what I asked”
Comment from 19 Oct 2026 in “Harness Engineering 101: The LLM is the brain, the harness is the body”
Other online documentations people recommend
The four most recommended other online documentations, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ArchWiki | 86 | 4 | 96% | 10 | — | Approved |
| MSDN | 17 | 10 | 63% | 10 | — | — |
| Gentoo Wiki | 9 | 3 | 75% | 3 | — | — |
| Anthropic documentationThis page | 5 | 4 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
| Consumer Rights Wiki | 5 | 1 | 83% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They don't have any of these and the guide you mentioned isn't related to what I asked”
“Only place with reliable info.”
“compared to the claude page”
“it was just fluff. For example there were exactly zero hints on how to do your prompts.”
“Anthropic's developer documentation: https://platform.claude.com/llms.txt”
“the official documentation by Anthropic has been the source you'd need”
“I read OpenAI or Anthropic's documentation nowadays and it's just so full of useless junk”
“I think Anthropic's docs are better.”
“Anthropic and OpenAI both have decent stuff on there, plus their own docs have examples.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.