Making your first request

Introduction to Claude Models

Nikhil Rangarajan

Data Scientist

What is the Anthropic library?

Official Python SDK for accessing Claude
Helps structure Claude interactions
Installing via pip:
```
pip install anthropic
```
Importing the library:
```
import anthropic
```

Diagram starting from a prompt, going to the Anthropic API, to the Claude model

Authentication and setup

import anthropic


client = anthropic.Anthropic(
  api_key=os.getenv("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY")
)

🔑 Key not needed in course exercises

Sending our first prompt

response = client.messages.create(

    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",

    max_tokens=100,

    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": 
   "What DataCamp course do you recommend to learn Claude?"}]

)

model: Claude Sonnet
max_tokens: Limits output size (about 4 characters per token in English.)
- Token: smallest unit of text that the model processes
messages: A list of interactions starting with the user's input

Extracting the model output

response - Entire structured API response
response.content - Returns list of message parts
```
[{'type': 'text', 
'text': 'Claude is...'}]
```
response.content[0].text - Assistant's reply
```
"Claude is..."
```

Putting it all together

import anthropic


client = anthropic.Anthropic()


response = client.messages.create(
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": "Summarize the benefits of Claude in one sentence."}]
)


print(response.content[0].text)

Putting it all together

import anthropic #Importing

client = anthropic.Anthropic() 

response = client.messages.create( 
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": "Summarize the benefits of Claude in one sentence."}]
)

print(response.content[0].text)

Putting it all together

import anthropic #Importing

client = anthropic.Anthropic() #Initializing

response = client.messages.create( 
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": "Summarize the benefits of Claude in one sentence."}]
)

print(response.content[0].text)

Putting it all together

import anthropic #Importing

client = anthropic.Anthropic() #Initializing

response = client.messages.create( #Requesting
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": "Summarize the benefits of Claude in one sentence."}]
)

print(response.content[0].text)

Putting it all together

import anthropic #Importing

client = anthropic.Anthropic() #Initializing

response = client.messages.create( #Requesting
    model="claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    max_tokens=100,
    messages=[{"role": "user", 
               "content": "Summarize the benefits of Claude in one sentence."}]
)

print(response.content[0].text) #Extracting

Let's practice!

Introduction to Claude Models