Claude Code Tutorial for Non-Coders

[00:00] Today I'll show you how to use Claude Code as a non-coder. We'll start by clearing up the biggest misconception you probably have about Claude Code, and then obviously complexity for you. Along the way I'll cover three reasons why you'd even want to

[00:17] use Claude Code and one big red flag why you shouldn't. I'm David DeWinter, I partnered with Anthropic to bring you this one. So, the biggest misconception is that Claude It's not. It's a general AI agent that happens to write code. You choose a

[00:34] folder to work in and describe what you want in plain English. So, if you know Claude Cowork, you're most of the way there, tutorial for that in the top right, by the way. Code runs on the same engine as Cowork. It's just that

[00:46] Cowork has more guardrails, so you don't end up shooting yourself in the foot. That means that Cowork can build apps too. So, let's actually see what's different about Code. Code, and there's a desktop app as well. You don't have to use a scary

[01:04] looking terminal window or a command prompt. So, with that, let's walk through the steps of building an app. The first trick is picking the right thing to build. Keep it small, keep it focused, and it sounds silly, but make sure whatever you build

[01:17] will actually be useful to someone. If you can't say out loud, why it's worth building, don't build it. And if you need some inspiration, check out some of the many apps that you use at work that are crammed into

[01:29] Excel or Google Sheets. Some of those are ripe for turning into real software. Here's an example. I keep my sales pipeline in a spreadsheet. It works, but every time a deal changes stage, I have to go do a handful of other things,

[01:43] like reorganize folders on our shared drive, gather new docs, research the account, and so on. So, I'm going to build an app that handles all of that for me. To follow along, you can grab Claude Code right here. I recommend also downloading Visual

[01:57] your files while you work. When you start with VS Code, you'll want to do two things. First, use the open folder link to open an empty folder on your computer. I've got one here already called sales pipeline. Second, to get Claude Code to

[02:12] show up, click on the Extensions button in the sidebar, then type in Claude to find the Claude Code extension. You're looking for the official one made by Anthropic. You should see a blue install button here to install it. Once the install completes, click

[02:25] here to open the secondary sidebar and make sure Claude Code is selected. You'll see this window down below. You can go a little bananas with the customization, view. The Explorer view shows everything in this folder. I've got my pipeline spreadsheet here

[02:41] already. There's a link in the description if you want to grab it too. Let's in. I'm not a developer. I track my pipeline inside at sign sales-pipeline.xlsx.

[02:54] And yes, that's a trick. Use the at sign to refer to any file in Continuing on, I want a simple app that shows my deals grouped by stage that can read from this file, where I can drag a deal from one stage to

[03:06] the next. When I change stages, it updates the Excel. Interview me about anything else that by clicking on this hand icon in the bottom right. This makes Claude show

[03:18] me its plan before it touches anything, so I can catch a wrong turn before it spends time building the wrong thing. So when I build a new feature or from the very start. Now, while this is working, here's a quick overview of all

[03:32] the modes. We've got the manual mode where it's going to ask for approval before making any changes. Edit automatically. We'll handle changes in files automatically, but we'll still ask your permission to run any custom tools. Plan mode, we've already covered. And then auto

[03:48] mode will try to auto approve actions as long as Claude doesn't think that they're risky. Now, after about 30 seconds, it's going to ask us some questions. Remember, in we asked it to interview us about what it needed to know. That's a prompting

[04:02] trick you can use when you're not sure which context is relevant. Answer the questions based on what you want to see. I want these three fields on every card. I want the last updated column to be updated when I move deals between stages.

[04:15] For now, I just want dragging to work. And I do want it to back up the Excel before I make changes. It's submit answers when you're done. A couple seconds later, you'll get a plan to review. Like I said, the plan is a

[04:28] to make sure Claude doesn't steer off track. Remember when we said, I'm not a developer. This is a great way to teach Claude to keep it non technical for to use this tell Claude what to do instead box. For example, if you don't

[04:44] know what openpyxl is, you could type in something like this. You quote what it says and you ask, what does it mean? It comes back pretty quickly, even apologizing for the jargon that it's writing. It tells you what openpyxl

[04:56] rest of the jargon from the plan. If you want to rewrite the plan, go ahead and do so. I'm going to keep things moving and type approved. I'll press enter. I'll click yes and auto accept edits because I don't want it to bug

[05:09] me until it's done. In fact, I'm going to make that even stronger by clicking the modes button again and then clicking auto. That takes a few minutes to complete. Cowork. While it builds, you can see every file that it creates right here.

[05:26] Cowork doesn't offer that level of visibility inside the app. Now that it's finished, it's also made this file that we can double click to open it to quickly get there right click on the file and then select Reveal in File Explorer that

[05:39] opens the folder where we can double click on this .bat file to open the app. Now remember, this app is linked to the spreadsheet, which means if I drag a deal to a new stage, it should be updated there. We can verify

[05:51] this by opening the document and seeing that Northwind Traders is in the active stage. The last updated date was also marked as today. Now, Claude Cowork could build this too, but here's where we get clunky. I'm going to ask Claude Code to

[06:05] reach out to a different folder on my computer. Here's the new feature we're going to build. See, all those accounts in the spreadsheet also have their own folder inside of our shared drive. When an account moves from prospects to active, we also want

[06:19] their folder to move into the active folder. We also want to make sure that To do this, I'm going to paste a prompt from the resource guide. That's also in the description. Let's go through it step by step. We're keeping it pretty simple.

[06:33] When a deal moves to active, it should change its location on the shared drive. Here's the shared drive location. Active accounts should be in the active folder and should have subfolders created if they don't already exist. Remember, we switched this to plan mode

[06:47] first before we make the change. We can do that with this menu, but the faster way is to hold shift and press tab until you get the right mode. While this is running, by the way, this is reason number two to use Code.

[06:59] It can reach across your machine to entirely different folders. first. That sandbox in Cowork can be useful or it can really slow you

[07:12] This plan I approved off camera. Let's see what Claude did. We've got the active folders on the right side of the screen. Let's see what happens when we move We see the Contoso folders added and all of the new subfolders are there. Now,

[07:29] this worked on my machine, but sometimes you might not like the changes that Claude Reason number three to use Claude Code is just a better environment, something we call a harness. There are all sorts of commands you can access using the slash key

[07:43] One example is /rewind. Use this to roll back both your code and your Cowork also doesn't have an explicit plan mode. Other cool commands include /goal

[07:58] where you can keep a prompt going until it accomplishes exactly what you want. And for fun, drop a comment if you know what /stickers does. Now, let's talk about how you share an app. Today, it lives on your machine

[08:10] If a teammate wants it, you can copy all of the files that you But if the whole team needs it, that's likely a conversation with your IT team.

[08:23] fix it on everybody's machine. There are better ways to build software. Now, you remember that misconception I told you earlier? I said Cowork could do a lot of the same things.

[08:36] So I actually built this app with the same prompts in Claude Cowork. The So instead of plan mode, I had to ask it to write a plan. I had to explicitly grant permission to reach that folder in our share drive.

[08:51] There's no file view to watch it work. And there's no /rewind if something Now, if you're still on the fence about using Claude Code, here's a big red

[09:03] flag not to use it. Claude runs with close to full access to your machine. And certainly far fewer of the guardrails than what Cowork gives you. So for example, if this permanent deletion question in Cowork makes you nervous and you don't

[09:17] know how to tell if it's safe or not, then Claude Code isn't for you. Now you know when to reach for Claude Code and if Cowork is actually enough for you. Remember, you can download Claude Code using the link in the description

[09:29] David. I'll see you in the next one.