First Kitchen · Lesson 01 of 10
Set Up Your Kitchen
Lesson 1 of First Kitchen, our free course for people who pay for Claude but haven't built anything yet. In thirty minutes: Claude Code installed, signed in with the subscription you already have, and your agent building and opening its first page — while you watch.
Welcome to First Kitchen — a free, follow-in-order course for people who already pay for Claude and use it as a chatbot, and no further. No coding background needed. If you write code for a living, our recipes will serve you better; this kitchen is for first-timers.
One promise before we start: every lesson ends with something you can see. No theory stockpiling. Today, a computer does something because you asked for the outcome — not because you followed a hundred little instructions.
What you'll plate today
By the end of this lesson, Claude Code — the agent version of the Claude you already subscribe to — is installed and signed in, and it will have created a small web page and opened it in your browser. On its own. While you watch.
Ingredients
- Your existing Claude subscription (Pro is enough — no extra cost anywhere in this course)
- Your everyday computer — Windows or Mac both work
- About 30 minutes
Cook
1. Set up the counter — VS Code
Download VS Code (free) and install it with the default options. Here's the reframe that makes this less scary: you will not write code in it. VS Code is your kitchen counter — the place where you watch what your agent cooks: files appearing, changes happening. Watching is your job. The agent does the chopping.
Open VS Code, choose File → Open Folder, create a new folder called first-kitchen anywhere you like, and open it. Empty counter, ready.
2. Install the stove — Claude Code
Open the terminal inside VS Code: menu View → Terminal (or press Ctrl+`). A text panel appears at the bottom. That panel is the stove — it looks intimidating and it is not. You will only ever paste things into it.
Paste the line for your machine and press Enter:
Windows (the panel should say PS at the start of the line):
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex
Mac:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Text will scroll by. Scrolling text is the sound of a kitchen being installed — normal. When it settles, close the terminal panel (trash-can icon) and open it again so it notices the new arrival.
3. Light the burner — sign in
In the terminal, type this and press Enter:
claude
First run, it sends you to your browser to log in — use the same Claude account you already pay for. That's the whole billing story: this course runs on the subscription you have. When the browser says you're done, come back to VS Code. You're now looking at a prompt that's waiting for you, inside your empty folder.
4. Place your first order
Paste this in and press Enter:
Create a file called hello.html — a small welcome page that says
"My kitchen is open" in big friendly letters, with a warm background
and today's date on it. Then open it in my default browser.
Now watch. Two things will happen. First, it asks your permission before creating the file and before running anything — that's the safety rail, and it's why you can relax: nothing happens in this kitchen without your yes. Approve it.
Second: your browser opens, and there's a page that did not exist a minute ago, saying your kitchen is open. You didn't write it. You ordered it.
5. Taste the loop once
The real skill of this whole course is what you do next — ask again. Paste:
Make the page nicer: add a soft gradient background and center
everything on the screen. Then refresh it in my browser.
Approve, watch, see the page change. That request-watch-adjust loop is the entire craft. Everything after this lesson is just bigger versions of what you just did.
When it burns
claudeis not recognized — the terminal hasn't noticed the install yet. Close VS Code entirely and reopen it (your folder will still be there), then try again.irmis not recognized (Windows) — your terminal is CMD, not PowerShell. Click the ˅ arrow next to the + in the terminal panel and pick PowerShell, then paste again.- Login opened the wrong account — type
/logininside Claude Code and redo it with your subscription account. - Work laptop blocks the install — company machines often do. Use your personal computer for this course; bringing agents to office machines is its own recipe, with permission from IT.
- It asks permission for every little thing — yes, for now. That's by design while you're new. Trust levels are a later lesson, once you've seen enough to know what you're approving.
Order up
Before you leave the kitchen, check the pass:
□ VS Code opens your first-kitchen folder
□ Typing `claude` in the terminal starts a conversation
□ hello.html exists — and opened in your browser
□ You changed the page once by asking, not by editing
All four checked? Then something important is already true: you told a computer what you wanted, and it figured out how. Keep the folder — we cook in it for the rest of the course.
Next up — Lesson 02: Your First Dish. A real one-page site about you, running on your machine, built the same way: by talking.
If any step lost you, use the question box below — that's what it's for. A step that lost you is a hole in the lesson, not in you, and your question patches it for the next cook.