CLAUDE · PROJECT 1

Add Claude to your PC

Everything the Relay project uses, installed once. Nothing here is hard; it is just a list that nobody hands you. Pick your computer at the top and the commands change to match.

Showing the Mac version.Showing the Windows version. Every step says whether it is something you click or something you type.

Get a Claude account

Go to claude.ai and sign up. The free plan lets you try the chat. Claude Code, the building tool used in every project here, needs a paid plan (Pro or Max). Start with the cheapest one; you can change it later. (There is also a pay-as-you-go API route for developers; the lessons use the subscription, which is simpler.)

You do thisBrowser

Why: the account is what the desktop app and the building tool sign in with. One account, every device.

Download the Claude desktop app

From claude.ai/download. Open the downloaded file and drag Claude to Applications, then open it from Launchpad and sign in.Run the installer, then open Claude from the Start menu and sign in.

Inside the app there is a Code tab. That is Claude Code: the thing that reads your files, writes code, runs commands, and opens a browser to check its own work. The whole Relay project was built in that tab.

You do thisDownload · install · sign in

Install the four tools the projects use

Claude writes the code, but it works through a few standard tools: git saves history, gh talks to GitHub, node runs JavaScript, and vercel publishes to the internet. Open a terminal and paste these.

Open Terminal (Launchpad → Terminal). First install Homebrew, the Mac's package installer, if you do not have it:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then the tools:

brew install git gh node
npm install -g vercel

Open Windows Terminal (Start → type "terminal"). Windows has a built-in installer called winget:

winget install Git.Git GitHub.cli OpenJS.NodeJS.LTS

Close the terminal, open it again so it sees the new tools, then:

npm install -g vercel

Check it worked. Paste this; each line should print a version number, not "command not found":

git --version
gh --version
node --version
vercel --version

You do thisTerminal · paste · EnterCheckpoint

If a command asks for your password, that is your computer's login password, typed blind (nothing shows while you type). That is normal.

Make the free accounts, and sign in once from the terminal

GitHub (github.com): where the code is backed up. Free.
Vercel (vercel.com): where the app is published. Free tier is enough to start. Sign up with your GitHub account.
Supabase (supabase.com): the database. Free tier is enough to start.

Then sign the two command-line tools in. Each one opens a browser window, you click approve, done. You do this once per computer.

gh auth login
vercel login

You do thisAccounts are always your click, never Claude's

Why: in the Relay project, Claude creates the repository and publishes the app with one command each. It can only do that because you signed in first.

Make a folder and type the first prompt

Create an empty folder for your first project. In Terminal: In Windows Terminal:

mkdir ~/relay

mkdir $HOME\relay

Open the Claude app, go to the Code tab, choose that folder, and type the sentence that started Relay:

lets do it with a simple communication app far as just a mock set up

Then press Enter and watch. That is the beginning of step 1 of the Relay project, and from here on the replay shows exactly what happens next.

You do thisClaude does the rest

That is the whole setup.
One account, one app, four tools, three free services. Everything after this is building.

Next: the Relay project →