Do this first · 30–45 minutes

Setup

Two accounts, three installs, one check that it works. This is the environment all five sessions are built on.

Participants finished this before day one, so that no teaching hour was lost to installing software. Working through the decks on your own? Same advice — do it before Session 1B.

If something refuses to install, keep going anyway. Sessions 1A and 2 are followable without a working install; come back to this page before Session 4, which needs one.

1 · Two accounts

Account	Why	Where
Claude Code	The tool the whole workshop runs on	anthropic.com/claude-code
GitHub	Version control, and how you get these materials	github.com

A Claude Pro subscription is enough. If you would rather pay per use, an API key with a small amount of credit also works.

2 · Three installs

A terminal

macOS — Terminal.app is already there. Press ⌘-Space and type "Terminal".
Windows — install WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Open PowerShell as Administrator, run wsl --install, then restart. Everything in the workshop happens inside the Ubuntu window it gives you.

Python

macOS and Linux — check with python3 --version. If it prints 3.10 or higher you are done; otherwise install from python.org.
Windows, inside WSL — sudo apt update && sudo apt install python3 python3-pip.

Claude Code

$ npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

No npm? Install Node.js first — the LTS build from nodejs.org. Then run claude once and follow the login prompt.

Obsidian, for Session 3

Free, no account needed: obsidian.md. Just install it — we create the vault together in class.

3 · Check it works

Make a scratch folder and start the agent:

$ mkdir ~/workshop-test && cd ~/workshop-test
$ claude

At the prompt, type:

> Create a file called hello.py that prints "ready for the workshop",
  then run it.

Claude asks permission, writes the file, runs it, and prints the message. If that happened, you are set up correctly — quit with /exit.

Two commands are worth knowing before you arrive: /help lists everything you can type, and /exit quits.

4 · Bring one more thing

Have a small piece of your own data, or one research chore you would like to automate ready. A CSV, a folder of PDFs, a script you keep re-running by hand. The practices work far better on a problem you actually care about, and part of each day is deliberately left open for your own material.

Trouble

command not found: claude: The npm global bin folder is not on your PATH. Run npm config get prefix, then add that folder's bin to your PATH.
command not found: npm: Node.js is not installed. Get the LTS build from nodejs.org.
Windows, nothing works: You are probably in PowerShell rather than the WSL Ubuntu window. Type wsl first.
Still stuck: Email jiaqishao@u.nus.edu with the exact error text.