The Claude Code beginner’s guide.

Claude Code is an AI that works on your computer instead of in a chat window. It can open your files and folders, organise them, write documents, build spreadsheets, build working apps and websites, and do the boring multi-step jobs you keep putting off. You describe the job in plain English and it does the work.

The name is the worst thing about it. “Code” makes it sound like a developer tool, and Sean avoided it for months because of that word. You don’t need to know how to code: he runs his whole agency on it and has never written a line of code in his life.

All you need: a computer, a Claude subscription and 10 minutes.

SETUP

Set it up in ten minutes.

The easiest way in is the desktop app. The terminal version exists too, and you can graduate to it later, but you don’t need it on day one.

Download the desktop app
Go to claude.com/claude-code and download the app for your computer, Mac or Windows. No terminal, no commands.
Sign in
Open it and sign in with your Claude account. The Pro plan is enough to start.
Pick one folder
When it asks which folder to work in, pick one folder to start with. Make a new one on your Desktop called AI Workspace if you are not sure.

Don’t start with something important. Start with something annoying. Point it at a messy folder and try one of these.

Your first four prompts.

Look at everything in this folder and tell me what's here.

Organise these files into folders by type and rename them so I can find things.

Read these three PDFs and give me a one-page summary of each.

Build me a simple spreadsheet that tracks [the thing you track in your head].

Sean’s first prompt on his first day was “organise my desktop.” It sorted every screenshot and file into tidy buckets, and that was the moment it clicked. Give yourself that moment first, then get ambitious.

THE HABITS

Three habits that get you better results.

Say what done looks like.

“Clean up this folder” is vague. “Put the invoices in one folder, the contracts in another, and name each file with the client and the date” gets you exactly that. The quality of your instruction sets the quality of the output.

One job per session.

Finish a task, start a fresh chat for the next one. Long, wandering chats make every AI vaguer. Short, focused ones stay sharp.

Read before you approve.

Claude Code asks permission before it changes or deletes anything. That prompt is your safety rail, so read it. Approve what you understand and question what you don't.

Is it going to break my computer?

No. It asks before touching anything, everything it does is visible to you, and you decide what it can reach by choosing the folder it works in. Start it in one folder, keep your normal backups running and you are safer than you are with most apps you already use.

AFTER WEEK ONE

The ladder to climb.

Each rung is a real job it can do today, and each one is bigger than the last.

Organise
Your desktop, your downloads, your documents folder. Start with the mess you have stopped seeing.
Produce
Reports, proposals, summaries and spreadsheets from the files you already have.
Automate
The weekly job you do by hand, turned into a thing you trigger with one sentence.
Build
A working tool: a dashboard, a calculator for your customers, a simple internal app, a website.

THE ONLY LIMIT

Your imagination sets the limit.

The tool is the same for everyone. What separates the results is your imagination and your judgment: imagination to see what is worth asking for, and judgment to check what comes back. Both grow with use, so start today, start small and start with the annoying thing.

Sean climbed this exact ladder, from a messy desktop to the 6 live internal apps that run his companies, and the method behind them is what we install for clients.

See what we do