Getting Started with Claude Code in Smarter

Overview

This tutorial guides you—highly technical programmers at Northern Aurora Power & Light (NAPL)—through configuring Claude Code (Anthropic’s agentic coding assistant) inside Smarter, our company-wide on-premise LLM authoring and hosting platform.

Smarter abstracts every LLM provider behind a unified YAML-first interface. Although Smarter ships with native support for several providers (OpenAI, Google, Meta, DeepSeek, etc.), Claude Code is not enabled out-of-the-box. You will add it yourself by declaring an Anthropic-backed provider in a declarative manifest, then use it for real-world coding tasks.

Goal

We will use Claude Code with Smarter to autonomously read your codebase, propose multi-file changes, run tests, commit code, and iterate until the feature or bug-fix is complete—all while staying inside the NAPL-approved, on-premise, cost-tracked environment.

Prerequisites

You are assumed to already have:

A valid Smarter account and the ability to log in to the Smarter dashboard (https://smarter.napl.internal).
Familiarity with YAML and declarative configuration (Kubernetes-style manifests).
Basic familiarity with the Smarter CLI (smarter command) or the Prompt Engineer Workbench.
Access to your NAPL Anthropic API key (provisioned by the Security team and stored as a Smarter secret; you will reference it by name).
A local clone of the project repository you want to work on.
Python 3.11+ and Git installed (for the proof-of-concept example).

If any of the above are missing, contact your team’s Smarter administrator before proceeding.

Setup

Install the Smarter CLI (one-time, if not already present in your IDE environment):
```
pip install smarter-cli
```
Authenticate the CLI (uses your Smarter SSO):
```
smarter login
```
Verify you can see the company-provided Anthropic secret:
```
smarter secrets list | grep anthropic
```
You should see a secret named something like napl-anthropic-claude-key.

Concept Overview

Smarter is built around declarative manifests—plain YAML files that describe AI resources (LLMClients, Agents, Tools, etc.). Key concepts you need for Claude Code:

Provider — The upstream LLM service (anthropic in our case).
Model — The specific Claude variant that powers Claude Code (claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022 or newer).
Resource — A versioned, namespaced object (e.g., ClaudeCodeAgent) that you smarter apply.
Plugins — Declarative YAML tools that give the LLM the ability to read/write files, run shell commands, execute tests, and commit code—exactly what makes Claude Code “agentic.”
Secret references — Smarter never exposes raw API keys; you reference company-managed secrets.
Unified API — Once the resource exists, you call it via the Smarter Python SDK, REST API, or IDE integration exactly as you would any other model.

Adding Claude Code is therefore just a matter of writing (or copying) the right manifest and applying it.

Step-by-Step

Create a new manifest file

In the root of your project (or in a .smarter/ directory), create claude-code-agent.yaml:

claude-code-agent.yaml

apiVersion: smarter.napl.internal/v1
kind: Agent
metadata:
  name: claude-code-prod
  namespace: your-team-namespace
  labels:
    purpose: coding-assistant
spec:
  config:
    provider: anthropic
    defaultModel: claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022
    apiKeySecretRef: napl-anthropic-claude-key   # company secret
    temperature: 0.2
    maxTokens: 8192
  systemRole: |
    You are Claude Code, an agentic coding assistant inside NAPL’s Smarter platform.
    You have full read/write access to the current Git repository.
    Always use the available plugins to explore, edit, test, and commit code.
    Think step-by-step and explain your plan before acting.
  plugins:
    - name: filesystem
      type: built-in
      config:
        root: "."
    - name: shell
      type: built-in
      config:
        allowedCommands: ["git", "pytest", "ruff", "npm", "make"]
    - name: git-commit
      type: custom
      config:
        description: "Commit changes with a conventional commit message"

Apply the manifest
```
smarter apply -f claude-code-agent.yaml
```
You should see output confirming the resource was created or updated.
Verify the resource
```
smarter get agent claude-code-prod
```
Test in the Prompt Engineer Workbench (optional but recommended)
- Log into the Smarter web UI → Workbench.
- Select your new agent claude-code-prod.
- Type a simple request: “Add a new endpoint to return current power grid status.”

Integrate into your workflow (via SDK example)

Install the Python SDK if needed:

pip install smarter-api

Then:

from smarter import SmarterClient
client = SmarterClient()
response = client.chat.completions.create(
    agent="claude-code-prod",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Refactor the billing module to use async database calls"}],
    stream=True
)
for chunk in response:
    print(chunk.delta.content, end="")

Proof of Concept

After completing the steps above, run this command in your project root:

smarter chat claude-code-prod --prompt "Implement a new Python module that calculates expected power output from a solar array given irradiance and panel efficiency. Include unit tests and a conventional commit."

Expected result: Claude Code will:

Explore your repo using the filesystem plugin.
Create a new file solar_calculator.py.
Write comprehensive tests.
Run pytest via the shell plugin.
Commit the changes with a proper Git message.

You will see the full agentic trace in your terminal (or the Workbench) and the files will appear in your working directory. This is the concrete outcome you should achieve before considering yourself onboarded.

Troubleshooting

“Provider ‘anthropic’ is not recognized”

Your Smarter instance may still be on an older build. Run smarter version and ensure you are on v0.13+ (or whatever version the infrastructure team has deployed). If needed, ask the Smarter admins to enable the Anthropic backend module.

“Secret napl-anthropic-claude-key not found”

Verify the secret exists with smarter secrets list. If missing, open a ticket with the Security team referencing “NAPL Anthropic enterprise key for Smarter”.

Agent times out or returns empty

Increase maxTokens or lower temperature in the manifest and re-apply. Also check token consumption in the Smarter dashboard under Usage → your-namespace.

Plugins fail with permission errors

The shell plugin only allows whitelisted commands. Add any new tools you need to the allowedCommands list and re-apply the manifest.

Changes not appearing in Git

Make sure you are running the command from inside a Git repository and that the git-commit plugin is enabled.

Rate-limit or cost spikes

All usage is tracked by the accounting codes configured by the Finance team. Use the dashboard filter provider=anthropic to monitor.

You are now fully onboarded and ready to use Claude Code inside Smarter for all your custom programming work at NAPL.

Questions or feature requests? Open an issue in the internal Smarter repository or reach out to the IT Generative AI team.