Week 2 — From Talking to Building
Last week was ideas. Today you build. Laptops open, hands on — by tonight you'll have looked inside a chatbot, written and shipped real code, and watched Claude Code build an app in front of you.
Before you arrive: have your machine set up per the installation guide and account setup — today is hands-on, so a working laptop matters.
Agenda
Morning · 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
- Welcome back — how today works (we drive together; you do the key parts on your own machine).
- Inside the chatbot — in the Claude Workbench, watch a conversation become JSON, see the message history grow with every turn, and find out why the model forgets everything between chats. Plus: a tool call (web search) and reasoning ("thinking") tokens, live.
- A quick word on JSON — just enough to read every input and output you'll see today.
- Your first program — use Claude to write a small Python program that pulls structured data out of a messy document, then copy it into a file and run it yourself.
- Source control & GitHub — put your program in a repo and walk the loop every engineer lives in: branch → commit → push → pull request → review → merge.
Working lunch · 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Afternoon · 2:00 – 6:00 PM
- From one file to a real app — ask Claude (chat) to build a grocery-list web app, and feel exactly where copy-paste-from-chat starts to hurt.
- The leap: Claude Code — meet the CLI and watch it build the same app — in your files, running — and push it to GitHub.
- Under the hood — the agentic loop, how context fills up as it works, and your first slash command:
/context. - Why Claude Code is so effective — the shell, the filesystem, running code on the fly, built-in web tools, and MCP tools like Playwright.
- The catch — why the same vague prompt gives everyone a different result, and how to direct AI like a manager briefing a junior: clear, specific instructions.
- Designing on purpose — establishing a branded look with Claude Design.
- Wrap-up — what you built today, and a look ahead to next week.
Reference material — Day 2
The tools, docs, and tutorials behind today's session. Bookmark these — you'll use them all summer.
Tools you'll use today
- Claude — the assistant you'll chat with (and where we generate today's Python program).
- Claude Console & Workbench — where we look "inside the chatbot" at the raw JSON, tool calls, and reasoning.
- Claude Code — Anthropic's agentic coding tool in the terminal.
- Claude Design — turn ideas into polished, branded designs and prototypes.
- Pi Coding Agent — another coding agent in the wild; same shape as Claude Code (model + tools + loop).
Official documentation
- Claude API docs — the home for building with Claude (messages, tools, structured outputs).
- Structured outputs — getting schema-shaped JSON out of the model (today's Python lab).
- Claude Code docs — install, usage, slash commands, and configuration.
- Claude Agent loop — the agentic loop documented: reason → act → observe → repeat, the engine under Claude Code.
- Get started with Claude Design — official walkthrough.
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) — how tools like Playwright plug into Claude Code.
Official tutorials
- Anthropic Academy — free courses, including Claude Code in Action and Building with the Claude API.
- Claude Code 101 — Anthropic's free hands-on starter course for Claude Code.
- anthropics/courses (GitHub) — Anthropic's open educational courses and notebooks.
- Prompt Engineering — interactive tutorial (GitHub) — hands-on prompting practice.
- Introducing Claude Design — what it is and what it can do.
Git & GitHub
The source-control loop from this morning — work through these to make branch → commit → push → pull request → merge second nature.
- What is Git? — the official Pro Git book: what version control is and how Git thinks about it.
- Git Basics — getting a repository — initialize or clone a repo, then stage and commit changes.
- Git Branching — branches in a nutshell — why branches matter and how to use them.
- GitHub flow — the branch → commit → pull request → review → merge workflow you'll live in all summer.