▒ workshop

> read /lessons/module-00

Welcome

Start here. No experience needed — that's a promise, not a figure of speech.

Hello, and welcome. You’re about to learn how to build a real piece of software and put it on the internet — starting from nothing. Not “nothing much.” Nothing. No coding, no computer-science background, no idea what half the words mean yet. That’s exactly who this guide is written for.

By the end, you’ll have made something that works, saved it safely, and put it online at a real web address you can send to a friend. People will tell you that’s hard. For a long time it was. It isn’t anymore, and this guide is the proof.

How you’ll actually do this

Here’s the part that surprises people: you are not going to memorize code. You’re going to describe what you want in plain English to an AI assistant called Claude Code, and it writes the code for you. Your job is to be the person with the idea, the taste, and the questions. The assistant is the one who types the cryptic stuff.

Think of it like this: you don’t need to be a mechanic to drive somewhere useful. You need to know where you want to go and how to steer. This guide teaches you to steer.

What you’ll be able to do by the end

  • Set up your laptop with the same tools professional builders use
  • Have a real conversation with an AI assistant and get it to build what you describe
  • Understand where your files live and how to move around your own computer
  • Save your work so it can never be lost, and back it up to the cloud
  • See your creation running, first on your own machine, then live on the internet

How to use this site

The modules are numbered for a reason — do them in order. Each one assumes you’ve done the one before. They’re short on purpose.

A few things you’ll see along the way:

  • Boxes you can copy. When you see a dark box with a copy button, that’s a command or a phrase. Click copy, then paste it where the lesson tells you. You never have to type these by hand.
  • Written for Windows. This guide is built specifically for Windows, so every step, command, and screenshot matches what a Windows user sees — no “if you’re on a Mac, do this instead” detours cluttering the path. If you’re on macOS or Linux you can still follow along and the ideas are all identical, but some of the specifics — installing the tools, what file paths look like, a handful of commands — will be different, so you’ll need to adapt a step here and there. Your AI assistant is excellent at translating a Windows instruction to your system; when something doesn’t match, just tell it what you’re on and ask.
  • Checklists. At the bottom of each module there’s a checklist. Tick things off as you go — the site quietly remembers your place, even if you close the tab and come back tomorrow.
  • Underlined words with a dotted line have a plain-English definition. Hover or tap them.

One way, not the only way

There are many ways to make something and put it on the internet, and this is only one of them. It’s deliberately a bit programming-centric: you’ll install a code editor (VS Code), work in a terminal, and set your computer up like a proper coding workstation. That’s on purpose — the goal isn’t just to ship one page, it’s to leave you with a real builder’s setup you can keep using for whatever you make next. But it does mean this path asks a little more of you up front than some alternatives. There are simpler, more “no-code” routes to getting a thing online (all-in-one website builders and the like), and for some goals those are genuinely the better pick. This guide isn’t claiming to be the easiest or the “best” way — just a complete, honest one that works.

One more bit of honesty: this world moves fast. The tools, model names, screens, buttons, and prices described here can go out of date quickly, and this guide isn’t actively maintained to stay the best way to do any of this — parts of it may already be a step behind by the time you read them. If a screen doesn’t match what’s written, that’s normal, not something you broke; your AI assistant is usually the quickest way to bridge the gap. What doesn’t expire is the underlying shape of it all — how files and folders work, what saving and backing up really mean, what it is to put something online, and how to steer an AI in plain English. Those concepts outlast any particular tool, and they’re the real thing you’re here to learn.

One promise from me to you

Nothing in here will assume you “already know.” If a word shows up, it gets explained. If a step has five clicks, you get all five. When something is genuinely weird or annoying (a few things are), this guide will say so out loud instead of pretending it’s obvious.

Ready? The next module gets your accounts set up. It’s the easiest one — mostly just signing up for two free things.

your checklist0 / 2 done