The purpose is not so much Claude Code, but that LLMs running semi-autonomously in a shell environment with access to Unix tools are powerful in a way that a web chatbot is not. Replace Claude Code with some other TUI such as opencode and, modulo some of the specifics of CC's implementation, the truth still stands.
In context of UNIX philosophy, something like llm(1) is probably a better option.
https://llm.datasette.io/en/stable/