Before you start: what you are building and what the words mean

You are going to build a real web app, with a real database, and put it on the internet. You are going to do it without learning to code. You will learn something harder and more useful: how to tell an AI exactly what you want, how to check that you got it, and how to undo it when you didn’t.

This first lesson has nothing to install. Read it once. It makes every later lesson shorter.

What you are building

A client tracker. One screen with a list of clients. Each client has a name, a company, an email, a status (lead, active, paused, closed) and free-text notes. You can add a client, edit one, and delete one. Every change is saved in a database, so it is still there tomorrow, after a restart, and after you deploy it.

It is deliberately small. Small enough to finish in an afternoon or two. Real enough that it has every part a business app has: screens, a database, secrets that must stay secret, and a deploy. Once you have built this, you have built the skeleton of almost anything.

What the words mean

You will see these names all course long. Here is what each one is, without the jargon.

Word	What it actually is
Terminal	A window where you type commands instead of clicking. Every tool in this course is started from it. Mac calls it Terminal. Windows calls it PowerShell.
Claude Code	An AI that lives in the terminal, reads your project, writes and edits the files, and runs commands. You talk to it in plain English. It is the one doing the coding.
Node.js	The engine that runs JavaScript on your laptop. Next.js needs it. You install it once and forget it.
Package	A ready-made piece of code your app downloads and uses. Node.js comes with a tool called npm that installs them.
Next.js	The framework the app is built in. It turns files into pages and handles what happens when someone clicks a button.
Database / Postgres	Where the app remembers things. Postgres is the specific database we use. It is free, boring, and widely used.
Docker / Docker Compose	A way to run a program like Postgres inside a sealed box on your laptop. One command starts it, one command stops it, and it stays out of the rest of your computer.
Port	A numbered door on your laptop that a program listens on. The app uses 3000. The database uses 5432.
Prisma	The translator between your app and the database. You describe what a “client” looks like once, and Prisma handles reading and writing it.
Git	A save-point system for your code. Every “commit” is a snapshot you can go back to. This is your undo button when the AI breaks something.
Repository	A folder that Git is tracking. “Repo” for short.
GitHub	A website that stores a copy of your repository online. It is your backup, and it is how the app gets to the internet. “Push” means sending your latest commits there.
Vercel	The company that hosts the finished app. You connect GitHub, they put it on a URL.
localhost	Your own laptop, pretending to be a website. When the app runs “on localhost:3000”, only you can see it.

You do not need to memorize these. Come back to the table when a word shows up and you have forgotten it.

What you need

• A laptop. Mac or Windows. Both are covered in every lesson. Docker is the demanding one: it wants 8 GB of memory and, on Windows, Windows 10 version 22H2 or Windows 11. A few gigabytes of free disk space.
• About six hours, spread over as many sittings as you like. Every lesson ends at a safe stopping point.
• A Claude subscription. Claude Code needs a Claude Pro, Max or Team plan. Pro is enough for this course. Once you are building for real, get Max at 5x or higher, because you will write a lot of code. It is the one thing in this course that costs money. Everything else is free.
• A free GitHub account and a free Vercel account. You will create both when you get to the lessons that need them.
• Admin rights on the laptop. You will be installing programs. On a company laptop, check with whoever manages it first.

How the lessons work

Every lesson follows the same shape:

1. What you will do. One paragraph. If it does not make sense yet, keep reading; it will.
2. The steps. Each one tells you what to type or click, and what you should see afterward. Commands you type into the terminal look like this:

node --version

Things you say to Claude Code look like this, and you paste the whole block:

Explain what this project does in three sentences a non-developer would understand.

Every block has a Copy button. Use it. Typing commands by hand is how typos become an hour of confusion.

3. Check your work. A short list. Do not move on until every item is true.
4. If something went wrong. The common failures and what to do about each.

The three habits

These are the whole difference between people who finish and people who quit with a broken folder. You will practice each of them in a lesson, but here they are up front.

Habit 1: Say what you want, then check that you got it. Claude Code will do what you ask, quickly and confidently, whether or not it was a good idea. Your job is not to write code. Your job is to be specific about what you want, and then look at the result with your own eyes before you say “looks good.”

Habit 2: Commit after every working step. A commit is a snapshot. When the app works, you take one. When the AI breaks it ten minutes later, you go back to the snapshot instead of trying to talk the AI out of the hole it dug. Lesson 5 teaches this. Every lesson after it ends with a commit.

Habit 3: When you are stuck for more than twenty minutes, stop and ask a person. Not a forum. Not another AI. A person who has done this before. Every lesson has a button for that, and it goes to a CTO who reads every request personally. Being stuck is not a sign you are not cut out for this. It is the normal state of software, and the fix is usually two sentences from someone who has seen it before.

Check your work

• You can describe the finished app in one sentence.
• You know which of the words in the table you would need to look up again. That is fine.
• You have a Claude subscription, or you know you will need one by Lesson 3.
• You have decided when you are doing Lesson 2. It is the longest one, because it is the installing one.

Next

Lesson 2 installs the tools. Give it forty minutes and a good internet connection.