Claude Code for Beginners: Your First AI Agent (No Code)

So if you keep hearing people talk about cloud code and AI agents, but you feel lost, you feel like you're behind this video is for you. And I've been a software developer for a long time, but I'm going to assume that you have never written a line of code before. And by the end of the next few minutes, I want you to have your own AI agent, something that actually does a real task for you on your computer by itself. So just follow along. Here's what we're going to build first. Before we get into it, what actually is an agent? You probably heard the term, but what, what is it? Well, you've probably used a chat bot before. You've used chat GPT or Gemini or cloud. You've gone in and type something, gotten an answer back. That's helpful for you, but it doesn't actually do anything. It just is giving you information. Then you can go act on it, but the itself is not doing anything. An agent is different. It lives on your computer and it can actually take actions, not just give you information. It can read your files, create your files, organize your emails, run tasks, really anything that you can do on a computer. An AI agent can also do on the computer. So that's the whole idea behind an agent is it doesn't just answer it acts. It does things for you. And you can get this set up without any code, just normal English words. Let me show you. So you might be familiar with Claude it's Anthropics API. They have a few different products. So they have Claude code and Claude co-work. I'll probably do another video on that because that's very user-friendly as well. It's just a desktop app that you can download and then it does things. But for this tutorial, we're actually gonna be looking at Claude code because that's what I use the most. So this is my setup. Again, you can do things differently if you want. For example, they have a desktop app that you could use that will probably be a little bit more user-friendly than what I do. So I like to run it in a terminal. I I'm just more comfortable in the terminal. I I don't know. I probably cause I was a software developer for so long, but you can definitely do this in the terminal. My son, who's 12, he uses the terminal and uses Claude code. He made a Roblox game, which that's going to be another video out coming out soon. But the first thing that you need to do to get your AI agent running is you need to download Claude code or you could do Claude co-work, but just download for Mac OS. If you do feel like braving the terminal, I'll leave a link to this down below, but you just have to type this command or copy paste it. And basically it's saying go to claude.ai slash install at SH and run it. And that installs Claude code in your terminal. Super easy. If you're a windows user, you can use PowerShell or CMD, the command prompt. When it launches, it's going to ask you to sign in. Now the free version of Claude does not work with Claude code. So if you want Claude code, you have to do at least the pro plan, which is it's $17 a month if you're paying annually, it's $20 a month if you're paying monthly. And okay, if you're at a position where you're like, I'm not paying 20 bucks a month for this, you're probably not at a point where you should be installing AI agents. Okay. And that's a pretty small investment for what it can save you. So I actually like that you have to pay some money to get to the next step because I know it's only going to be people who take it seriously. But once you get Claude code installed, you're going to log in with your paid account. So for this particular agent that we're going to build, uh, I'm just going to take, I built this messy, I called it messy folder. Okay. So it was just a messy folder. The, it's not real clear what anything is, just a bunch of random files, a bunch of random screenshots. And it's just, like I said, a messy folder. So when you run Claude code, we're going to run it in that folder. So we're running it in messy folder here. And so now Claude code is looking particularly at that folder. So I can just say something like what files are in this folder. And then Claude does what it takes to look in that folder. So it says, here's what we have 15 files, no sub folders. They group like this. So there's some photos, some screenshots, some logos, some PDFs, some data and some notes. All right. So it answered, gave us the files. Let's make it actually do something now. So first this leads export dot CSV. I can see it in my folder. It can answer questions about it, but look what's actually here. There's a CSV of leads. Uh, it's from somebody's roofing business. I just had AI put this together. It's four names, four phone numbers sitting in a spreadsheet here on my computer. So this is what is in it. These are not real people, not real businesses. Dana Whitfield is always AI's go to like fake person. So just so you know, if you ever see that, and if there's actually a Dana Whitfield, I'm sorry that I use you in all my examples. So we'll make this our first agent. So we've got, everybody's got that folder, the downloads folder, the, or the desktop where there's just total chaos, hundreds of files. You're not sure they're random order. You're not sure what's going on. So let's make this agent clean this folder up for us. All right. So let's tell quad code, look at all the files in this folder and organize them into clearly named sub folders by type, put images together, documents together, PDFs together, and et cetera. Then tell me what you did. So this is the agent part. So now it's not going to do what a chat bot does, where it just gives some information back. It's actually going to go on the computer and actually do things. So, and you can see the commands it's running while it's doing it. And it did it pretty fast. Took me maybe 10 seconds. All 15 images are sorted into four folders. And here we go. This was messy folder before. Now we've got our spreadsheets in a folder, our documents in a folder, images, et cetera. So this is an agent, right? This is something you could do. You could follow what I just did in about two minutes and organize your desktop or organize your whole computer, organize your downloads folder. That's a good starting agent point and agents can do a lot more, but that's a good starting point. So that's a basic agent. It lives on my computer. It works on my files. Uh, it's, it's super useful, but the ceiling doing it this way is that everything you just watched happens on files on my computer. That's what cloud code does. It looks at your computer. So what if I want to build something that other people can use a real page with a form on it, a database behind it, a login, a web address, cloud code on its own. It doesn't get me there. All I can do is make a pile of files. That's where we're going to look at today's sponsor and it's called flute. Flute lets you build apps in cloud or chat, GPT, whatever AI you're using and get it live in minutes. And when you look at other build me an app tools that are out there, lovable and replit or take your pick, what they do is they sell you their own AI credits. So I'm already paying for clod and then I have to pay these other companies for their AI credits as well. So you got two bills now. So flute does not sell AI like that. So you plug in the clod subscription that you already have and it runs on that. So flute is not totally free. They do charge for the other half for the hosting, the database, keeping your app online, et cetera. I mean, that costs them real money. So I would expect that I would have to pay for it, but what you're not doing is paying twice for the same AI usage. So this is how you integrate. So this is how you integrate flute into your existing AI. If you're using the desktop app, you can actually just click this button. It's a lot user, you know, pretty user friendly in that way, but I'm actually going to use their MCP server. So again, this might make you feel cool. If you've always wanted to be a coder, you know, now's your chance. What I'm gonna do is clod MCP, add transport HTTP flute, and then their MCP server. So what an MCP server is, you're probably familiar with HTTP. That's how we access the internet. That's a hypertext transfer protocol is what it's called, but that's how we, the internet browser goes to those HTTP addresses and it gets the information it needs to show you a website. MCP is similar, but it's for AI. So it shows AI when you connect there, here's how you connect with flute. And here's how you get the information. So we can add this MCP server and then our clod code can talk to flute. So let's go back into clod here. Now that we have the MCP server and we'll see flute is now here and it wants us to authenticate. So we'll approve already logged in. So now we're connected to flute and there's, you know, hundreds, thousands, I mean probably tens of thousands of connectors and integrations with clod code now, but flute is one that I've been using here recently. I want to show you. So let's say using flute because now clod has that capability. Build me a lead tracker for a local roofing company, a public page where someone requests a quote with their name, phone address, and job type, a database behind it storing every request and a private dashboard the owner signs into to see the requests and mark them as contacted. So if you remember that lead CSV file that I had earlier in that messy folder we just organized, that's the problem I'm fixing here is somebody's leads in a spreadsheet on a laptop is not super helpful. No customer can reach it. The owner can't check it from his phone. So I'm building the real version. So a quote form on the front database behind it, private dashboard for the owner. Pretty much you can create anything that you want. So it created a project on flute, but it's starting with the design phase and provisioning off, but let's go check out on the web, the flute build. So this is where it's building on flute, but here it is in clod code building. So we can just wait for it in here and go from there. All right. So it says that it is done here and here we go. So we have this lead tracker and it's asking for owner login. So let's actually create an owner account here. Seed an owner account. I can sign into the dashboard with let's use owner at summit roofing.test password roof demo one, two, three. Don't steal my account. Anyone. It must have role admin or the dashboard returns a permission error. Then add four realistic sample quote requests with staggered dates, leaving two of them not yet contacted. So just to get a login where I can actually go see it. And nice thing about clod code is it keeps the context of what we're doing. So I don't have to say again, use flute. And here's the project we're working on. It actually reads back the conversation. Clod code can hold Opus five can hold 1 million tokens in context, which is crazy. So it has this whole conversation. So see it knows to call flute and it's looking in the database. So it knows how to do it without me specifying exactly. All right. So it created the login here. So let's go ahead and sign in with it. Owner at summer roofing dot test and roof demo one, two, three. All right. So that works. So it's successfully seeded with a an admin account and then it put the actual leads in here. So you can see here I can look into the database and you can see the data in the database. So this is, this is a real live working app. Again, just from a couple lines in here, connecting the flute, and then it can build you apps. Last thing I want to do for flute is publish this app. So I want to get a real URL that I could send to people potentially for them to access this themselves. So here we're going to click publish. We can choose a sub domain. If you have a paid plan, you actually get a free custom domain, but we'll just do summit roof dot app. Have it notify me this could take a couple minutes. So we'll have it notify me when it's ready, but it is going ahead and deploying. All right, so now this is live. Summit roof dot flute dot app. I'll leave a link down below. You can go check it out yourself. You can put in a quote and it'll show up in the tracker here in the database and it's a working live app that I created through flute using a cloud code. And what did this cost me on the AI side? Nothing extra because it just ran against my cloud plan. I already pay for the hosting and database around flute side and they have plans for that. So just, you know, you can pick whatever fits for you, but I didn't have to buy a second pile of AI credits to get this app built. So love that. Thank you flute for the, for sponsoring. So let's keep working with this agent that we've been building here in cloud code. This is the superpower that no one tells beginners about is you don't have to get it perfect the first time you just keep talking to refine it. So let's say going back to our messy folder, the photos, screenshots and logos in messy folder all got lumped together in images. Pull the screenshots and logos into their own sub folders. Separate them from the real photos. So if your agent didn't do exactly what you wanted it to do the first time, it's just like an employee. You just go tell it, okay, do this instead. That wasn't quite right. To me, working with cloud code, working with an agent is pretty much like working with a really fast assistant who never gets annoyed with you. So there it goes. It's sorted images how I asked it to. So you go back here and now in images, there's screenshots and logos. So to organize it even more. And again, using just plain English, you can have it do whatever you want it to do. All right, one more thing. And then we will close out this video. But you remember that command that I ran to plug in flute, that MCP connector, there's all sorts of MCP servers that you can connect to. That wasn't just a flute thing. This can connect cloud code to anything else. But I want to show you gamma real quick. Gamma lets you create slides using AI. So we're going to add the gamma MCP server. Forgot a dash before transport. There we go. So now we have that MCP server connected. So we need to authenticate it as well. And one last thing I want to show you before we go, I do want to show you the desktop app because I know for a lot of you, the terminal is going to just not be as comfortable. Do you want to use the terminal? I like it. I do almost all my work in there, but there also is a desktop app. So I want to show you that. And it's going to work very much the same as the terminal, except for, you know, it's a desktop app and you just type in here and you can connect things very similarly how you do in the terminal. So there's skills, there's connectors, there's plugins. I can do videos going over all that, but don't want to overwhelm you, but we have all these connectors here. So these are different tools that I'm connected to. So I'm connected to my Gmail, Google calendar, Google drive, et cetera. We're going to add a new connector here. We're going to add the gamma connector. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to create an AI generated slideshow presentation of what we learned here today using cloud code connected to gamma. So gamma lets you create presentations and docs with AI. And so we're going to hook that in connected here. And it opens up asking me to allow it to connect to my account and it is connected. So now when we go to connectors, gamma is in there now, so I can create presentations now. So I'm going to have it create a presentation. I'm actually going to use the audio. So I don't have to type at all, make a 10 slide presentation that teaches a complete beginner, how to build their first AI agent using the exact process. I just followed install cloud code with one command of the terminal, open it inside a folder because whatever folder you're in is what it can see. Give it one instruction in plain English, organize this messy folder into clearly named some folders by type. It shows you a plan and waits for you to approve it, refine it just by talking to it again, then save it as a reusable slash command. So next time it runs in one step, 10 separate slides, not one long page, put an image on every slide and keep it professional and minimal. That would have been a lot to type, but I can just speak it. So that's another a pro here. Then go ahead and run. So that's the whole ask. I described the process. I said how many slides I wanted, what information for it to go over, no design tool, no template to fight, no dragging boxes around, which is good. I'm not a good designer. So I love when AI can do this for me. So in cloud was going to try to do it on its own, but gamma is going to do a much better job. So I added to the prompt, use gamma. And so now it's using the connector. Now it's looking for a professional minimal theme, which is what I asked for. Then it asks which gamma theme I want to use. And I actually have my own theme I created for something else, but they recommend this how light one. So let's just go with what they recommend and we'll, we'll see what comes out. All right. So it finished, but it said only four of 10 slides got images. We'll just go ahead and we, I could regenerate, but we'll go ahead and leave it how it is. Let's go check out the slides that it came up with. So this is slide one. So you notice it's not a wall of bullet points with my, just my text dumped into it. It picked a layout and actually made nice looking slides. Like this is a nice graphic to put here. Build your first AI agent, complete beginner's guide from empty terminal to a reusable one word command in about 10 minutes. What is an AI agent? Organized it pretty nicely. Install it, which we talked about, found the folder, give it an instruction. These are great graphics to go along with it. Refine it by talking again. We talked about that and the result. Go check out gamma. It has a connector with Claude so you can build it right in Claude code, which is pretty amazing. Free to try. Link is in the description and go check out what other connectors that Claude has available. I mean, there's 2,351 right now. It looks like, so go, go check those out. So this was a whole thing. So you built and ran your first AI agent with zero coding and be honest, it wasn't that bad. Was it? It wasn't too hard to follow. If you want to keep going, I'm going to put together a start here playlist that walks you through just getting AI agents set up step-by-step. Let me know in the comments if that would be helpful for you. And if you get stuck or you want the exact commands to run today, or you want my personal help, we do have a free school group that you can check out where I give advice in there as well. So please like, and subscribe, shout out to flute, shout out to gamma. Appreciate you all. God bless you. And have a great rest of the day.