Claude Code has a hidden Agent for answering questions about itself

2 min readMar 9, 2026

There’s a built-in agent inside Claude Code you can invoke just by telling Claude to use the claude-code-guide agent.

What Is It?

It’s not a local file in your project. It’s not something you configure. It’s a built-in subagent defined in Claude Code’s system itself — available out of the box.

You invoke it like this:

Use the claude-code-guide agent to explain how hooks work

That’s it. Claude will spin up the subagent and it’ll take over from there.

What Does It Know?

The claude-code-guide agent specializes in three things:

Claude Code CLI — commands, flags, configuration, workflows
The Agent SDK — how to build and orchestrate agents
The Claude API — models, parameters, message formats

If you’re confused about how something works inside Claude Code, this is the agent to ask.

What Tools Does It Have?

It runs with: Glob, Grep, Read, WebFetch, and WebSearch.

Notice what’s missing: it can’t edit or write files.

That’s intentional. Its only job is to answer questions. It reads, searches, and fetches — nothing else.

Why This Matters

When you’re deep in a Claude Code session and need to understand how something works — hooks lifecycle, MCP integration, environment variables, the Agent SDK — you don’t have to break context and go search the docs manually.

You have an agent for that, already inside the tool you’re using.

Most people don’t know it exists. Now you do.

Tip: If you want richer output when learning a specific feature, change output-style to Learning or Explanatory inside /config.