Introduction to Claude Code Course
Claude Code is an AI assistant that works directly in your terminal and editor. Unlike chat-based tools, it can read your files, write and edit code, run commands, and complete multi-step tasks on your behalf. This course introduces Claude Code and gives you hands-on practice using it for real work tasks.
Who Should Attend
This course is for anybody who who works with data, scripts, or spreadsheets and wants to use AI to automate tasks.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, attendees will be able to direct Claude Code to complete tasks that will save them daily time and effort.
Course Content
What is Claude Code and how does it work?
- What Claude Code can do: read and edit files, run commands, complete multi-step tasks
- How (agentic) Claude Code differs from (conversational) ChatGPT and Copilot
- The Claude Code interface - in VS Code (an editor) and the terminal. The Claude Code commonly used slash commands:
/help, /clear, /compact, /memory
Claude Code best practices: how to get the best results
- Write effective prompts: be specific about files, goals, and constraints
- Iterate: follow up, correct mistakes, ask for alternatives
- Use plan mode to review and refine Claude Code’s approach before it makes changes. Review and adjust a plan before execution.
- Write a short, effective CLAUDE.md file to give Claude Code a heads-up on the objectives, goals, and constraints for a project
- Be able to use Claude Code safely with a bit of help from git version control.
Practical applications
- Automate data tasks: read and transform CSV files, generate reports
- Write and edit Python and SQL scripts
- Work with Excel via Python (openpyxl, pandas)
- MCP servers: a brief overview of how Claude Code can be extended with additional tools and data sources. We will look at the Power BI MCP server as an example.
Safety
- Review all changes before accepting.
- Know when to stop and check rather than letting Claude Code continue
- Back up work and use version control as a safety net. See the changes that Claude Code made, get back to a previous version if necessary
Course Length
This is a full-day course.
Pre-requisites
Helpful but not required - some familiarity with:
- generative AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Copilot
- files and folders