Claude Code Clearly Explained (and how to use it)

0:00So you want to use Claude Code. You want to get the most of it, but you don't know exactly how. This is a crash course, how to master Claude Code, and we explain it in the most simple way. There are thousands, literally thousands of other Claude Code tutorials on the internet, but there are none as simple as this. I brought on Professor Ross Mike. He comes on and he shares it in the simplest way so that anyone could create jaw-dropping startups and software using Claude code. We're going to give you the exact steps for how you can set it up,

0:32thinking about the beginner, how to think about the terminal, how to think about prompting. But if you stick around to the end of this episode, there's a tips and tricks section, which I think is super valuable. And I can't wait to see what you build.

0:54we got ross mike on the pod by the end of this episode what are people going to learn hopefully you're going to not feel overwhelmed with cloud code i know the terminal is scary and it's a big boogeyman but i'm going to give you the blueprint how to use it i'm also going to share consider this the ultimate crash course on how to use cloud code or any agent effectively Okay, let's get into it. So, I mean, the best way to start these episodes is with sharing our screen. So, when we think of building applications using AI, using some sort of agent like CloudCode or OpenCode or Codex, whatever it is, there's a couple of things that you always have to keep

1:35in mind. You know, the principles never really change. One thing that it's important for us to understand is however good your inputs are will dictate how good your output is. We're getting to a point where the models are so freakishly good that if you are producing quote-unquote slop, it's because you've given it slop. There was a time where the models weren't good enough. There was a time where we had serious qualms and issues with the quality of code the models gave us. But now we're starting to get to a point where even myself, like I'm reviewing a lot more code than I write. And I never thought I'd be able to say that in the early months of 2026. So very important for

2:18us to understand our inputs, how good they are, how precise they are, how articulate they are, are just as good as our outputs and will dictate just how good our outputs will be. And the way I want people to think about this is, Greg, is like imagine you were communicating this to a human, to a human engineer, right? If you give them sparse instructions and if anyone is in client work, you realize that most clients, they tell you one thing, but you have to sort of extract the deeper thoughts of what it is they want. It's the same way when we work with these agents, when

2:51we work with Cloud Code. We need to be really, really precise with how we build our inputs. Now, what do I mean by inputs? What I mean is our PRDs or our to-do list or our plans, right? Like there's – people are giving you different names. It doesn't really matter. It's all the same thing, right? And when we think of a PRD or when we think of a to-do list or when we think of a plan, I want us to think in such a way as this. Let's say I'm trying to build this product, right? Let's say – I don't know, Greg, any product ideas that – Do you have product ideas? Yeah, that's actually

3:28the best person to ask, right? Let's say I go on IdealBrowser.com. I was just going to it. I was just going to it. Yeah, pick the idea of the day from Idea Browser. It says it's a diagnostic tool for appliance techs losing hundreds of repeat visits. See, I have no idea what that means, but let's say I know what that means. Essentially, when thinking of this idea and looking to build this into a full-fledged product, Generally, the way you're going to think is, okay, if product X does Y, Z, A, B, and C, how I would reach that is I'm going to think of features, right? So let's

4:08say there's four core features to this application that Greg just mentioned. And if I have these four features built out, we can safely assume that we have said product, right? The way we are to design our PRDs to-do lists and plans is such that we want the agent, the model, to build out all these features, right? Because all these features put together is our product. You see, a lot of times people will describe a product, not describe features, and will be frustrated with AI. Like AI

4:41is supposed to magically know what you're thinking about. By the way, Greg, am I making sense so far? 100%. I'm with you. Yeah. So we really need to think in features. But here's the cool part. When developing features, oftentimes the issue with models is like you'll develop a feature or like let's say the model develops a feature. We don't know if it works. We don't know if it did it the

5:03right way. That's where with all the cool Ralph stuff that's happening, we can introduce tests. Right. So let's say the model, the agent builds feature one. Before moving on to feature two, what I'm going to do is I'm going to get the model to write a test. If that test passes, then we'll work on the second feature. If that test passes, we work on the third feature.

5:24So we're finally entering an era where you can really build something serious with these models. So instead of telling you about just planning, why don't we do actual planning together? So I'm going to pop up my terminal. So I know everyone's afraid of the terminal, but in all honesty, if you don't know how to use a terminal, ask AI. It's the simplest thing. And if not, you can even download the Cloud Code app and go on Code section, give it a specific folder you want to work on. and use the app. Like there's literally no excuse to not use Cloud Code. If you're afraid, boohoo, just jump into use AI, you have all the tools. That being said, I'm just going to type in Cloud,

6:04and we're going to have Cloud Code open. And usually how people plan is they'll click shift tab, right? And then you have plan mode on. And you can say, let's say, I want to build tick tock UGC generating app for my marketing agency. I see like these UGC apps everywhere. please help me create a plan, write this in the, in, PRD.md file. So this is how most people have planning set up, right? You'll tell Claude Code or Cursor or whatever agent to do the plan for you,

6:52and you ask it to be in some file. And like it says, it'd be happy to help you plan this out. And it'll ask you some questions, etc, etc. But I found that there's a better way to get an even more concise plan. And this way, it actually gets you to think a lot more about trade-offs, concerns, UI, UX decisions, because most of the time you're sort of allowing the AI to have free reign over certain decisions, which I think will lead you with a finished product that you're not excited about. And that's invoking a special tool. I was going to show you guys the tweet, but

7:26unfortunately Twitter is down right now. But Cloud Code has a specific tool called Ask User Question Tool. And essentially what this tool does, it starts to interview you about the specifics of your plan right so I'm gonna drop this prompt where it says read this plan file interview me in detail using the ask user question tool about literally anything technical implementation UI UX concerns and trade I spelt implementation wrong do not judge me And what this is going to do is it going to go past the plan that we have and start to ask us about my new details. So let's finish off this plan first. I'm just going to accept this is internal use. TechSack will use React. I just

8:09want core features. We'll submit answers. And then CloudCode, you'll see, might ask us a few more questions, but this will generally be the plan. Right. So it's not just the plan. It's the right plan, right? Like to what you were saying, like go back, scroll back up here, the features and, yeah, the features and tests. Like the way I think about this, and I don't know if you agree, is like if you ask Cloud Code to build you a car, it doesn't really know what a car is. It doesn't understand like you need a steering wheel and a radio and you need wheels. So the hard part is

8:47trying to figure out, is basically explaining what those things are in a really succinct and clear way. And that's what this interview is basically doing. It's explaining each of them and then we're going to test each of those features. Exactly. Like think of it this way, like a simple example. Let's say you ask the AI agent to build you a specific feature, right? How is it going to

9:10present that specific feature? Did you want it in a dashboard? Did you want it to be a modal? Did it have to be a separate page? Like when you don't specify these minute details, it will make the assumption for you. And with Ralph loops and all these type of things, like you might have a whole application built out and it's not exactly to the liking or the expectations you had. Right. So let me continue. I'll just make some selections here just so we can move on and

9:36then hit submit. and then I'm going to pause this planning here and then I'm going to paste this. I'm going to say read this plan file and I'm going to tag the plan file. It's called prd.md. We have that right here and I'm going to say interview me the details about this question or I don't even need to tag it because it has it in its context but I just want to show you how annoyingly annoying this is going to get meaning, it's going to keep asking me questions about said plan or said app idea. So notice how it says round one core workflow and technical foundation,

10:15right? And some of the questions it might even ask you are things that you might not know about because you're not technical. So what do I do when I don't know something, Greg? I'm going to copy this and I'm going to go to the chatbot of my choice, whether it's Claw, ChatGVT, whatever, and I'm going to ask questions. So if you remember earlier, it asked me generic questions about the

10:32app. Now it's saying, what's your ideal workflow for generating UGC video from start to finish? Like notice how the questions are even more specific now. So it says linear step-by-step, template-based, batch processing, iterative, conversational. So let's say I select that and it says, how should the app handle Hagen API costs and usage? So now it's talking about costs, right? Again, most of the times when you just have a basic plan. This is not included in the plan, right? Let's say we want to have a hard, hard budget. What database and hosting approach do you want to use? Most of you probably watching this have no idea. So I can copy this over, go

11:09to chat GPT and ask what's the best decision. This is my current situation. And then you keep going, you keep going and you submit answers. So when you use this ask user question tool, the questions become more granular. So it asked me about core workflow and technical foundation. Now it's going to ask me about UI, UX, and script generation. If you notice the first plan that it came up with, the default plan for Cloud Code, it was pretty basic. Now it's asking me, okay, what AI do I want to use for the script generation? I'll use Cloud. What UI style aesthetic are you going for? Minimal

11:44clean, dashboard heavy, creative tool feel, chat first, right? So hopefully, Greg, I'm making sense with like how much more questions I'm being asked when I'm invoking this ask user question tool. Yeah, it makes complete sense. You're also going to use less tokens in the end, right? Yeah, because the thing is, the better your plan, the better your input, the better the initial set of documents that you give the model, the better the outcome. And if the better the outcome, There's no back and forth, right? Most people will have a Ralph's loop running. It'll be a basic plan and it'll do what you told it to do, but you weren't specific. So now you're going back and

12:27then maybe you're running another loop or you're going back and doing all these changes. But if you get it done right, if you invest the time in the planning stage, I 100% believe you'll save a lot more money. And this will help you clear up a lot of ideas. For example, this idea that we just had, this TikTok UGC farm, how do we want it set up? Do we want it to be flat with search? Do we want it to be client campaign? There's a lot of like these minute details that you're not thinking about. And because you're not thinking about it, you're allowing Cloud Code to make

13:00those assumptions for you. Right. Which at the end, after it's burnt through a ton of tokens, now you're going back to change. Right. We can save so much headache if we do the proper planning from the beginning. And hopefully people see value in this ask user question tool. Make sure you specify it in your prompt. And hopefully, Greg, that made sense. It does. So I would say step number one for this Claude Crash Course is I would get good at planning. I would get really, really good at planning. I would get good at generating these. Like, look, it keeps on asking me questions. If you notice the very first plan that we generated with Claude, it was two sets

13:43of questions and it was ready to build. But with this, it's asking me, do I have basic avatars, custom avatars, multi-scene videos? How do I want to handle storage? Do I want to download the videos instantly, cloud storage, external storage? Like there's so much to software engineering. And I think in our last video, someone shared this on Twitter. I don't know if it was you or someone else. like software building personal software is easy but building software others are going to use is very very difficult and if you don't have the audacity or the decency to to set up a little time a little extra time to plan then i guarantee you whatever you generate is going to be ai slop and

14:21you might blame the model but really the problem is you so invest in your plans spend time using planning. Don't use the generic plan mode that cursor or cloud code has. I would use cloud code and then I would specify the ask user question tool. It's going to continue to know you with questions like it keeps asking, right? Because until it knows exactly what it is you want, it won't start building. So I would say that's step number one to building with cloud code. Step number two, and everyone's talking about Ralph and it's exciting, but I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't use Ralph. And the reason I wouldn't use Ralph if I was just starting out, Greg, is because how are

15:06you going to – like imagine this. Like imagine not knowing how to drive but then buying a Tesla for like the self-driving stuff. Like, cool in theory, but maybe it's a great idea to know how to drive, how to steer, how to hit the corners, how to maybe yell at someone when they cut you off before you get the full automated version. I say this to say because when you get good at developing plans and then working with the AI to build each feature and testing each feature you start to develop the sense on product building on like you know even I heard someone called Vibe QA testing You get this

15:48sense by going one on one yourself And this is why a lot of people who were fighting with Cloud Code all these months are really, really good at using it now because they spent the time building without using these crazy automation. So if you're using Cloud Code for the first time or you're just getting into it, good plan, number one. And number two, get your reps in by not using Ralph. So develop the features one by one. Now that you have your plan, you can literally tell Cloud Code, hey, OK, let's build the first feature. You know, go ahead and do it. And then once the feature is

16:21done, you can test it or ask it. How can I test this? How can I run this app? I wouldn't jump into using Ralph right away. Build without Ralph. But let's say you've built these reps now and you're comfortable with Cloud Code. Now you hear about all these things, skills, MCP, prompt.md, agent.md. What else is there? Something.md. You hear all these conventions, plugins. You have Ralph, all these things. So what do I need to perfectly build something using CloudCode or any agent? I'll be honest with you. Most of these things are all the same. PromptMD and AgentMD are just markdown files. Plugins are skills with a little bit extra. What you need to build

17:14successfully using these agents is, first of all, you need a good plan, right, which are documents, which is the PRD.MD we just generated. And then you need to document the progress that's being made. For anyone who's familiar with Ralph, you know what I'm talking about. For those who aren't, what's cool about a Ralph loop is as follows. A Ralph loop is basically you have a list of things

17:42that need to get done. The whatchamacallit, the PRD.MD or the plan. You give it to the AI model. The model works on the first task. It finishes and then documents it in another file and then it goes again and it stops until it's completed the whole list. Now, this isn't anything special, but the reason why it's now super powerful is because the models are getting so, so good. But here is the issue. If you have a terrible plan, if you have a terrible PRD, this doesn't matter. You're just donating money to Anthropic and I wish you the best of luck if that's what you want to do. But if you want to make sure that your tokens are not wasted,

18:25you're going to invest in a good PRD.MD file or a good plan file. Greg, am I making sense so far? A hundred percent. OK. You're driving the point home. Yes. So I'll talk a little bit about Ralph now. So with Mr. Ralph Wiggum, how do we use this? Now, there's a lot of different iterations, like people are coming with their own style. I'm going to share with you my Ralph setup in a second, Greg. One thing I will say is Cloud Code has a plug-in, a Ralph Wiggum plug-in. I wouldn't use that. And the reason I wouldn't use that is even the person who invented the whole Ralph system

19:04is against it. It's not the best use of Ralph. But I just want to share this concept of how Ralph works. It's essentially going to go through our plan, and it's going to build out each feature step by step. and it's not going to stop until it's done. This is cool when your plan rocks. If your plan sucks, then it's terrible. It doesn't matter. Now, in terms of how to set up Ralph Wiggum, I have my own setup and I don't want anyone to think I'm shilling my own setup for any reason. But the reason why I built my own setup is there's a couple of things my Ralph loop does. The

19:44first thing is it makes sure that there's a plan, a prd.md file, and there's a progress.txt file. But it also, every feature it builds, it then writes a test and it then lints. And basically what this does is it makes sure that every feature that's built actually works, right? Because there's no point on working on feature two if feature one doesn't work. If feature one doesn't work, if the test fails, guess what the AI model is going to do? It's going to go back to working on feature one. And once the test passes, we work on feature two. And then once feature two test passes, we work on features three. Right. All this is awesome. But I'm going to go back to the same

20:24point. If your plan sucks, then the Ralph loop won't matter. Now, in order to set up this loop, you can find the get up here how to set it up. You honestly, I'm not even going to explain it. Greg, people can literally copy the link, pass it to Claude and then be like I want to run this Ralph loop and it will tell you exactly what to do that's how good the models have become but I'll show you an example of this running so I have a simple prd.md file it's nothing crazy it's just to show you the point but basically there are a couple tasks here I want to build

21:00a basic server that has some basic endpoints and I just want to show you how my Ralph loop works. So when I run this Ralph loop, and again, if you don't know how to run this, you paste the GitHub URL in CloudCode in your agent and ask it and it will tell you how to do it. I have a few different configurations. I can use open code if I want. I can use codex if I want, but I'm just going to use CloudCode and I'm just going to run the script. And basically what it's going to start doing is it's going to start running through each task, as you can see, and it's going to update the PRD

21:36and it's just going to continue to work. Now, I can go and leave, right? I can go about my day, hang with Greg and this loop will continue to work. And I'm going to see that at some point, whether it's five minutes, three minutes, 10 minutes, however long this is, this is going to finish all the tasks. I'm going to have a working product built and all this is cool,

22:00but it doesn't matter if I'm going to go back to the original document, if the plan isn't good. Now, skills are great. MCPs are great. All these different markdown files are great. You would do yourself a serious service if your plan is good. So the key to successfully building with CloudCode is you have an absolutely great plan. And if you use the ask user question tool, You will spend so much time on the plan where it starts to get annoying. It doesn't get fun. But those of us who focus on this will end up having better outputs. Let's continue. If you notice here, my Ralph loop is continuing to go and it took care of the first task. I can see some files already

22:47generated. If I go to the progress.txt file, you can see, Greg, it started to make some progress. It's documenting that. And this is just going to continue to work. This is just going to continue to run. So people have different iterations. I know the AmpCode people have their own iteration and different people have their own iteration. It doesn't really matter. Right. Someone's Ralph is could be better. Someone's can be worse. Someone's going to be all of that is cool. But don't get

23:13stuck in the weeds. The main sauce is how you can articulate perfectly in a beautiful presentation. create the perfect input because if you create the perfect input we have reached a point where the models will give you perfect output so that my main tip crash course for people use the ask user question tool build without using Ralph And if you are going to use Ralph understand if your plan sucks you just donating money to Anthropic And I think Anthropic has enough money that they don't need your money being donated to them. Amen. Amen. Is there anything else people need to know, like little tips and tricks? I notice, you know, you're not using the Mac terminal,

23:59you're using Ghosty. ghosty yes yes so honestly it's all preference right so like the terminal you use and all this stuff is all preference here's what i would say like let's have a tips and tricks list tips and tricks so first i would say is my goodness spelling today first i would say is use the ask what was the specific tool i just want to make sure i don't forget ask user questions tool Slept on. I don't know why no one's not talking about it. It literally I saw the tweet from the

24:33Anthropic team. Hundred percent. I would use that when planning. Number two, don't over obsess. Obsess on MCP skills, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not saying don't get into these. I'm not saying don't read about them. I'm not saying don't use them. But I can almost guarantee you these things are not the reason why your product isn't working, right? Most of the time, it's your plan sucks, right? That's number two. Number three, I would use Ralph after I've built something without. And the reason being is, again, listen, if you are a baller shot caller and you have all the money to blow and you don't care and you want to donate money to Anthropic, go ahead and use Ralph. But

25:21If we were to sit here eye to eye and you haven't built anything, deployed anything, there isn't a URL that I myself or Greg can click on that you've built. You have no business using Ralph. You literally have no business using Ralph. I would first get good at prompting and building something using a plan, whether it's whatever AG1, Cloud Code, Open Code, whatever. Once you have something deployed to Vercel or like there's a URL and we can use it, then you can use Ralph. So number four, this is a little in the weeds, but context is more important than ever. And a lot of times, Cloud Code or even Cursor will tell you what percent of context has been used. I generally

26:05wouldn't go over 50%, meaning like the Anthropic model, Opus 4.5 has a 200,000 token context limit. The moment, in my opinion, you've got over 100,000 tokens, meaning you're using the same session. it starts to sort of deteriorate that's when you have people greg who say oh like i started off good but it started going bad that's because you've filled it with so much context and the best way to think about this is like yourself right like let's say we went to some english class and or some you know whatever class and the professor just kept dumping information information information at some point we're going to feel overwhelmed and we're going to actually start forgetting stuff And I'm not

26:46saying that's how the models work, but that's how the models act. Right. So context is very much important. The moment you see 50 percent or even 40 percent, I would start a new session. And last but not least, have audacity. And what I mean by that is software development is starting to become easy. The software engineering is very, very hard. And what do I mean by that? To architect software, to make sure things are usable, to create great UX, UI. to have great taste, to make something

27:16that people actually use requires time. And in order to spend time, it requires audacity. I know the models are good and you can clone a six billion dollar software. But if all of us can do it now, what makes software different? I think thinking about those things and thinking about the art of building products and building something that's tasteful is very, very important. And I think anyone who uses these five tips should kick cheeks in 2025, 2026. Sorry. I agree on the

27:46audacity thing. I think like it's for me, it's like about creating scroll stopping software. You know what I mean? Like there's so many people and there's a lot of tutorials about this, like cloning billion dollar software. You know, I cloned a four billion dollar software. Look at me. But that's not the type of software that's going to work in 2026. Right. I saw this. Let me just share it real quick. I saw this guy who created a running app based on how you're feeling. So it's like, how are you feeling? Stressed, angry, and it's an AI-assisted running app that interprets

28:22your current emotions to generate a personalized route. And I just thought it was interesting. You know what I mean? I'd never seen an app like this. And I think that as you call it Audacity, I think this is an audacious app, right? It's scroll-stopping. You haven't seen it before. So I think push, you want to push Cloud Code to like get you to this basically. And this is why I'm like so pro people not using Ralph if they haven't built anything fully. Because like now we're, people are getting to a point where they want the model to think for them, right? Where like if you look at the app, you just shared the animations and how things were floating and like even the

29:02colors used for the different emotions. Like that requires thought, right? And that's what stops people now. Like if building the AI chat interface is easy, what's going to make your app different? I think a little bit of audacity, a little bit of thought and care and a little bit of taste goes a long way nowadays. And more than the models getting better because it's going to get easier. It's going to get better. It's going to get faster. But unfortunately, if you don't change, then it doesn't all matter. Yeah. And don't be afraid to use pen and paper like this. This

29:32person literally just like started sketching out the features. Yeah. Like how did this thing work? Yeah. I love it. I love it. Right. And this is why the app, if I don't know the metrics, but I'm willing to bet it's doing really, really well because all this stuff matters. Like we could clone something like this feature wise, but I'm willing to bet like the feel, the animations, the colors, we would not be able to get it exactly like this. 100% all right man thanks for coming on you got me fired up I actually I didn't know about that interview tool so thanks for sharing that with me yeah just a heads up it will ask a lot of questions I shared it with

30:12a couple friends and a couple people got annoyed but it's worth it right especially if you wanted to build something end-to-end or you're building a very like like very minute detailed feature then it's really really worth it i wouldn't use the general plan personally so just a heads up but it's really really worth it and i would love to hear people's feedback in the comments sounds good we'll be in the comments you got to come back on in a few months or whenever people want you it's always an absolute privilege to have you here i'll include links where you can follow and you should follow monsieur rass mike his youtube channel is x i'll include the link to ralphie

30:55even though if you're a beginner don't even click that link i i wouldn't like i know there's maybe some degenerates who do but i highly suggest you don't because if you haven't even built without it then no point have some willpower folks come on you know don't click the link but i'm putting it in there because i want to see who's tempted and yeah thanks again for coming on i'll see you i'm coming to toronto in april so let's hang out we'll see we'll see each other then and again as always it's a pleasure thank you so much you know for bringing me on of course later have a good one