A practical guide to Claude Code
From first prompt
to your own projects.
Use Claude Code in your browser or on your own computer. Learn the basics, make your first change, and understand what happens along the way.
Start with a small practice project. Every walkthrough explains where to click, what to type, and how to check the result.
Choose your starting point
Use your browser
Connect a GitHub project and give Claude a task. No terminal or local installation to start.
CLAUDE ACCOUNT + GITHUBStart the web walkthrough ↗>_Work on your computer
Use your own files and tools. Set up Windows, macOS, or Linux, one step at a time.
DESKTOP APP OR TERMINALSet up at home ↗What is Claude Code?
Claude Code is a coding assistant that can inspect a project, change its files, run development tools, and help you understand the result. You describe the outcome in ordinary language. It works with the files and tools its environment allows.
Regular Claude chat is a general conversation. Claude Code adds a working environment for software tasks. A Claude Code conversation can cause real file changes, run commands, and use connected accounts.
❯ Explain this project as if I have never coded. What does it do, and which file should I start with? Do not change anything yet.WHAT YOU ARE ASKING FORA guided tour of your project before making changes.
Your first five steps
Pick one place to work
Choose the browser for a GitHub project, or your computer for local files. You can learn the other path later.
Start with a practice project
Use a private repository with a README, or an empty folder on your computer. Avoid using a live business application as your first experiment.
Ask Claude to explain before editing
Learn the purpose of the files, then request one small, specific change.
Inspect the result
Read the changed lines, run the app or open the page, and ask what was actually tested.
Save a version you can return to
Use a Git commit locally or review and merge a pull request on GitHub. A chat transcript is not a backup.
What can you do with it?
| Your goal | What to ask Claude to do |
|---|---|
| Understand a project | Explain folders, trace a feature, or draw a simple architecture diagram. |
| Build something | Create websites, scripts, command-line tools, APIs, and application features. |
| Fix a problem | Reproduce an error, investigate its cause, make a focused repair, and test it. |
| Improve quality | Review changes, add meaningful tests, check accessibility, and document setup. |
| Research and visualize | Gather sources when web tools are available; create charts or interactive pages from data you provide. |
| Connect your workflow | Use GitHub, plugins, MCP services, or automation with explicitly scoped access. |
Capabilities depend on the tools installed, credentials provided, and platform you use. Claude can produce incorrect code or explanations. A confident answer is not evidence that a change works.
A small vocabulary, in plain English
- Terminal
- An app where you type commands for your computer.
- Repository, or repo
- A project with its files and saved change history.
- Branch
- A separate line of work, so changes can be reviewed before joining the main version.
- Commit
- A named snapshot of selected changes in Git.
- Pull request, or PR
- A proposed branch change that you review before merging.
- Diff
- A view showing the exact lines added, changed, or removed.
- Environment
- The machine, installed tools, network access, and settings a task uses.
- Token and context
- Tokens measure processed text. Context is the information the model can use during a request.
Official references: Claude Code overview ↗ · GitHub Hello World ↗ · Best practices ↗
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