The ULTIMATE Designer's Guide to Claude Code
No prior knowledge needed
It can (and will) change your life
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01
Why I started to learn and why you should too
Hi there 👋 I’m caro.
All of my life I’ve been passionate about creating, so when on February 4th of 2026 I was presented with the opportunity to build an app idea in a one week mega challenge I jumped right in with my university best friend, Majo. With who we actually completely knew for sure we could win. (Spoiler: we lost)
The brief of the challenge was to make a digital product for elder people. We came up with an app idea called De Una: a solution for elder people who have dreams, want to learn new things but don’t know where to start. We proposed that they could write what they want to achieve and with AI the app could give them a route, with steps, goals, topics and tasks to actually achieve it. We spent day and night working on the investigation, the opportunity, the idea, the design, but there was just one thing missing: (we just didn’t know it yet) making it work.
The challenge didn’t require the app to work, the important thing was the idea. But Majo and I always want to go one step further. So, I spent that whole week watching Youtube videos to learn how to vibe code this app. The night before we were building the presentation while I also tried to build the app with a Claude subscription. I asked my brother (a great engineer) for help. He gave me very good tips, which actually pulled me closer, but unfortunately I just wasn’t able to do it. Skill issue.
A day passed and we presented. [read this next part with passion and grievance] We made a great presentation, amazing video introduction, sleek design, insightful investigation, everything was soooo perfect. And, I know this makes us seem judgy and with a superiority complex, but we objectively knew our idea was better that the other peoples when we heard them present. We knew we would we were gonna win the prize (5.000.000 Colombian pesos ≈ $1500 USD).
Once everyone finished presenting the judges went out to make the final deliberation. There were 5 places, they anounced the 5th and 4th one, “we’re in the top 3 minimum” we thought. 3rd and 2nd announced. None of them were us. We put a camera to record our reactions when they announced “De Una”. So delusional. The room was filled with tension and suspense, when finally... they didn’t say our app name... “what?” we both thought. We just couldn’t believe it. “Not even on top 5?!”, on a 15 group competition? We remained still for several minutes, when reality hit us. We failed. They even gave us a participation certificate, the most humiliating thing they could have gave to two people who could already feel the victory on their hands.
Not confort with the results we went to ask why did we get such a low grade. The judges didn’t find the idea too posible. “What!? x2” It was completely possible, I knew it was, If I just had one more day to try to vibe code it, they would’ve seen it was possible. I knew it was, and it wasn’t remotely difficult to make. If I had just built it...
But, every story has a moral right? And it’s not that participating is the important thing or we learned a ton or that fable moral stuff. But to understand it you need to know something I didn’t tell you: Some months prior this challenge my brother was telling me constantly to learn to vibe code. And of course, I didn’t, I found the process of learning overwhelming cause I didn’t even know where to start, so I just never did. And when I really needed to learn, I almost did it but the time was the actual limit. So, the moral of the story is, start now. As the saying goes, “The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is today.”
All of my life I’ve been passionate about creating, so when on February 4th of 2026 I was presented with the opportunity to build an app idea in a one week mega challenge I jumped right in with my university best friend, Majo. With who we actually completely knew for sure we could win. (Spoiler: we lost)
The brief of the challenge was to make a digital product for elder people. We came up with an app idea called De Una: a solution for elder people who have dreams, want to learn new things but don’t know where to start. We proposed that they could write what they want to achieve and with AI the app could give them a route, with steps, goals, topics and tasks to actually achieve it. We spent day and night working on the investigation, the opportunity, the idea, the design, but there was just one thing missing: (we just didn’t know it yet) making it work.
The challenge didn’t require the app to work, the important thing was the idea. But Majo and I always want to go one step further. So, I spent that whole week watching Youtube videos to learn how to vibe code this app. The night before we were building the presentation while I also tried to build the app with a Claude subscription. I asked my brother (a great engineer) for help. He gave me very good tips, which actually pulled me closer, but unfortunately I just wasn’t able to do it. Skill issue.
A day passed and we presented. [read this next part with passion and grievance] We made a great presentation, amazing video introduction, sleek design, insightful investigation, everything was soooo perfect. And, I know this makes us seem judgy and with a superiority complex, but we objectively knew our idea was better that the other peoples when we heard them present. We knew we would we were gonna win the prize (5.000.000 Colombian pesos ≈ $1500 USD).
Once everyone finished presenting the judges went out to make the final deliberation. There were 5 places, they anounced the 5th and 4th one, “we’re in the top 3 minimum” we thought. 3rd and 2nd announced. None of them were us. We put a camera to record our reactions when they announced “De Una”. So delusional. The room was filled with tension and suspense, when finally... they didn’t say our app name... “what?” we both thought. We just couldn’t believe it. “Not even on top 5?!”, on a 15 group competition? We remained still for several minutes, when reality hit us. We failed. They even gave us a participation certificate, the most humiliating thing they could have gave to two people who could already feel the victory on their hands.
Not confort with the results we went to ask why did we get such a low grade. The judges didn’t find the idea too posible. “What!? x2” It was completely possible, I knew it was, If I just had one more day to try to vibe code it, they would’ve seen it was possible. I knew it was, and it wasn’t remotely difficult to make. If I had just built it...
But, every story has a moral right? And it’s not that participating is the important thing or we learned a ton or that fable moral stuff. But to understand it you need to know something I didn’t tell you: Some months prior this challenge my brother was telling me constantly to learn to vibe code. And of course, I didn’t, I found the process of learning overwhelming cause I didn’t even know where to start, so I just never did. And when I really needed to learn, I almost did it but the time was the actual limit. So, the moral of the story is, start now. As the saying goes, “The best time to start was yesterday. The second best time is today.”
Some documentation of me a week before the challenge:
Me after the challenge:
So, the weekend after, as a personal revenge with myself, I kept watching Claude videos and didn’t stop for like a month until I actually learned everything, and turns out it’s not actually difficult and I’m so thankful I did because It opened me a world of possibilities with this amazing tool. So... yeah, I lost, but I didn’t lose.
02
Theory
Finally, let’s start learning. As most of us probably know, Claude is an artificial intelligence assistant created by Anthropic. Claude's key features are writing, coding, and file analysis. They do not generate images. For this you can go to ChatGPT, Gemini, who have great image models.
Claude vs Claude Code
Claude is a web-based chat assistant, while Claude Code is an agentic command-line developer tool that runs locally to read and edit codebases directly. In a more human wording, Claude is this interface where you can chat, like the ones that we have been chatting on since 2022 for general text-based tasks. Now, Claude Code (this is the one I love and use everyday the one I love and use everyday. Remember how I said it runs directly in your terminal. Terminal is this program that lets you control your computer by typing commands instead of clicking with your mouse. So, it basically sends instructions to your computer operating system, it can open, move, modify, delete files and much MUCH more. We’re not gonna do this, Claude Code is the one who will do it, and that's why it's so powerful, it lives inside your computer.
But the theory by itself is kinda boring, maybe confusing and it teaches us almost nothing. We learn by doing, so lets install claude code.
Claude vs Claude Code
Claude is a web-based chat assistant, while Claude Code is an agentic command-line developer tool that runs locally to read and edit codebases directly. In a more human wording, Claude is this interface where you can chat, like the ones that we have been chatting on since 2022 for general text-based tasks. Now, Claude Code (this is the one I love and use everyday the one I love and use everyday. Remember how I said it runs directly in your terminal. Terminal is this program that lets you control your computer by typing commands instead of clicking with your mouse. So, it basically sends instructions to your computer operating system, it can open, move, modify, delete files and much MUCH more. We’re not gonna do this, Claude Code is the one who will do it, and that's why it's so powerful, it lives inside your computer.
But the theory by itself is kinda boring, maybe confusing and it teaches us almost nothing. We learn by doing, so lets install claude code.
03
Installing Claude Code
To install it, we’re gonna follow the Claude Code Docs https://code.claude.com/docs/en/overview
Step 1: Open your computer’s terminal and copy paste the one that corresponds
MacOS, Linux Wsl
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bashWindows PowerShell
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iexWindows CMD
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmdIf you see The token '&&' is not a valid statement separator, you’re in PowerShell, not CMD. If you see 'irm' is not recognized as an internal or external command, you’re in CMD, not PowerShell. Your prompt shows PS C:\ when you’re in PowerShell and C:\ without the PS when you’re in CMD.
If the install command fails with syntax error near unexpected token '<', a 403, or another curl error, see Troubleshoot installation to match the error to a fix and for alternative install methods.
Git for Windows is recommended on native Windows so Claude Code can use the Bash tool. If Git for Windows is not installed, Claude Code uses PowerShell as the shell tool instead. WSL setups do not need Git for Windows.
If the install command fails with syntax error near unexpected token '<', a 403, or another curl error, see Troubleshoot installation to match the error to a fix and for alternative install methods.
Git for Windows is recommended on native Windows so Claude Code can use the Bash tool. If Git for Windows is not installed, Claude Code uses PowerShell as the shell tool instead. WSL setups do not need Git for Windows.
To confirm the installation worked, run
claude --versionThe command prints a version number followed by (Claude Code).
Step 2: Log in to your account
Claude Code requires an account to use. Start an interactive session with the claude command and you’ll be prompted to log in on first use:
claudeAnd then write
/loginThat’s it! Now you can start using Claude Code!
Anything you wanna say?
The end. Go build something