Lesson 1 of 8

What is vibe coding?

Understanding the approach before you pick up any tools.

3 min read· ~5 min to complete

Vibe coding is building software by describing what you want in plain English. An AI assistant writes all the code. You direct — it builds.

DESCRIBE → AI BUILDS → REVIEW → ITERATE

You describe what you want. The AI writes the code. You review the result. You ask for changes. Repeat until it's right.

This isn't a simplified version of "real" programming. It's a different way to build software that happens to require very little prior technical knowledge. The skills you already have — clear thinking, structured problem-solving, knowing what good looks like — are exactly what vibe coding requires.

What you can build

Corporate professionals with no coding background have used this approach to build:

Internal tools that replace slow manual processes (expense tracking, report formatting, data cleaning)
Personal productivity apps (note-taking systems, custom dashboards, aggregators)
Proof-of-concept prototypes to present to engineering teams
Scrapers and automations that connect to external APIs

If you can describe what you want in plain English, you can build it.

The tool you'll use: Claude Code

Claude Code is a version of Claude that runs inside Terminal on your Mac. Unlike the Claude chat interface, Claude Code can:

Read and write files on your computer
Install software
Run code to test whether it works
Fix its own errors

This makes it far more capable than a chat interface for actually building things. You describe what you want, and Claude Code builds it — file by file, step by step — checking its work as it goes.

Why you need to open Terminal once

There's one unavoidable step: Claude Code itself needs to be installed, and to install it you need to open Terminal (the app that lets you type instructions directly to your Mac) and run a few commands.

You'll do this once. After that, everything else can be directed through Claude in plain English.

You do not need to understand Terminal. You are copying and pasting a few things into it and pressing Enter. That is all. This course walks you through every single step.

The four steps at a glance

STEP 0   Open Terminal on your Mac
STEP 1   Paste one command to install Homebrew
STEP 2   Install Node and Claude Code (two commands)
STEP 3   Run Claude and paste the setup prompt
         ↳ Claude sets up everything else automatically

After Step 3, your Mac will have: Homebrew, Node.js, Git, GitHub CLI, and Claude Code — all configured and ready. You'll be able to build.

The next lesson covers what you need before you start.