A simple hello world script to talk with Claude AI via API

talk_claude.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import os
import requests
import json

API_KEY = os.getenv("ANTHROPIC_API_KEY")
if not API_KEY:
    raise ValueError("Please set the ANTHROPIC_API_KEY environment variable.")

url = "https://api.anthropic.com/v1/messages"

headers = {
    "x-api-key": API_KEY,
    "anthropic-version": "2023-06-01",
    "content-type": "application/json"
}

data = {
    "model": "claude-sonnet-4-20250514",
    "max_tokens": 1024,
    "messages": [
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, Claude! Can you tell a joke about programmers?"}
    ]
}

response = requests.post(url, headers=headers, json=data)

resp = response.json()

# Extract just the text from the content array
text_blocks = [block["text"] for block in resp.get("content", []) if block["type"] == "text"]

# Join them (in case there are multiple text blocks)
assistant_text = "\n".join(text_blocks)

print(assistant_text)