Your First AI Coding Setup
Time to put it all together. You have a GitHub account and you know how to deploy. Now you pick an AI tool, write your first request, and ship one small thing. Keep it tiny. Tiny and finished beats big and stuck, every single time.
Step 1: Pick one tool and stick with it
Do not shop around for the perfect tool. Pick one and start. Two friendly choices: Cursor is an app that looks like a normal editor with an AI helper in the side, and Claude Code lives in your terminal and is great for seeing how the AI works step by step. Either is fine. You can switch later.
| Tool | Best if you want |
|---|---|
| Cursor | A normal-looking app with the AI built into the sidebar |
| Claude Code | To watch each step happen in a terminal window |
Step 2: Write your first request
A good first request says what you want, keeps it small, and says how you will know it worked. Do not describe the code. Describe the result. The tool figures out the how.
Make a simple one-page website about me in a single file.
Put my name, one sentence about what I like, and a friendly color.
Keep it in one index.html file and open it in my browser when done.Step 3: Ask for small changes
Something not quite right? Do not start over. Just ask for one small change at a time. "Make the title bigger." "Use a warmer color." Small steps keep things calm and make it easy to see what changed.
Step 4: Ship it
Now connect the dots from the earlier lessons. Save your work to GitHub, then deploy on Vercel. You can ask your AI tool to do both: "save this to GitHub and help me deploy it." In a few minutes you have a live link to the first thing you ever built.
That is the full beginner journey. You learned the words, set up the tools everyone uses, and put something real online. When you are ready for more, the AI Coding Mastery course picks up right where this one ends.