Your First “Hello”

Make Claude build something in the next five minutes.

By the end of this lesson

You'll have watched Claude build a real thing from one plain sentence.

Claude Code is running. Now just talk to it like a person. Type (in your own language — Russian, English, anything) what you want. The line wraps by itself as you type — and pressing Enter SENDS the message, like in a messenger. Start tiny so the win lands fast.

First, give your files a home so they're easy to find — just tell Claude: 'make a new folder called hello on my Desktop and do your work inside it.' You don't need to know where things go; Claude handles that.

Type something like this

you ▸ make a simple web page that says 'I build things now' in big
      glowing text on a dark background. then tell me how to open it.

claude ▸ building it…  ✓
claude ▸ Done. Run this to see it, or just open index.html.

ℹTwo things you'll see that nobody warns about

First: before acting, Claude shows little permission menus — 'Yes / Yes, don't ask again / No'. Don't type an answer into them: use the ARROW KEYS to highlight Yes and press Enter. (In the next module we'll turn these prompts off entirely.) Second: walls of technical text will scroll by. That's the work happening — don't read it, just wait for the plain-language summary at the end.

✦Old reflex: regenerate. New reflex: steer.

If the page isn't what you imagined — do NOT close it and start a new chat (the chat habit). Tell it what to change: 'bigger text', 'different color'. It changes that and keeps the rest. This one reflex swap is half of vibe-coding.

Your first build

0/5

ℹHow to actually open what it built

Claude tells you one of two things. Either a file like index.html — find it in your folder and double-click it; it opens in your web browser. Or a web address starting with http://localhost — copy it into your browser's address bar and press Enter. 'localhost' just means 'this page is running on your own computer right now.' (Windows quirk: folder not on your Desktop? It may be in OneDrive's Desktop instead — just ask Claude: 'where exactly is the folder? open it for me.')

ℹHow to leave — and come back

You're 'inside' Claude whenever you see its input box. Type /exit and press Enter to leave — you're back at the plain, boring terminal. Type claude to step back in. Closing the whole window is also fine: your files stay on the computer, nothing is lost. Knowing the exit makes the place yours.

✦Feel that?

You described something and it became real, in minutes, without writing code. That feeling — 'wait, I made that' — is the entire point of this course. Screenshot it. That's your before/after line.

Author

Evgeny Arsentyev

PhD · Chief Product Officer at a healthtech company

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