Claude Code — Workshop Quick Reference

One page. Keep it. Write on it.

The terminal: 4 commands, that's all

Type this It does this
cd Documents Move into your Documents folder
cd .. Go up one level
dir (or ls) List files in current folder
mkdir myproject Create a new folder

When something goes wrong: you get an error message. Nothing bad happened to your computer. Read the message, try again.

Starting Claude Code

Option A — Terminal (what we install today):

claude --version    ← check it installed correctly (shows a version number)
claude              ← open Claude Code in the current folder
/exit               ← leave Claude Code
Ctrl+C              ← stop something that's running too long

Option B — Claude Desktop app: Claude Code is also built into the Claude Desktop application. Open Desktop → click the tools icon → your local files and folders are accessible directly. No terminal needed. Same capabilities, visual interface.

Your three starter prompts

1. Convert your PDFs to readable text

Convert all PDF files in this folder to markdown.
Save each one as [original-filename].md

2. Ask your research question

Read all the markdown files in this folder.
What are the main arguments across these documents?
What themes or tensions appear more than once?
What questions do they raise but not answer?

3. Get a reading note you can keep

Create reading-notes.md with:
1. One-sentence summary of each document
2. Themes that appear in more than one document
3. Three open questions this reading raises
4. Two things I should read or investigate next

CLAUDE.md — your project's briefing document

Create this file in your project folder. Claude reads it automatically every session.

# My Project

[2–3 sentences: what you are studying or arguing]

## Current focus
[What you are working on right now — a paper, a chapter, a dataset]

## What I want Claude to help with
-
-

## What stays my own judgment

- My interpretive conclusions

- My research question framing

The rule: if you want Claude to always know something, put it here.

When things go wrong

Symptom Fix
claude: command not found Close the terminal, reopen it, try again
Claude gives a wrong or generic answer It doesn't know your project yet — add context to CLAUDE.md
Output looks wrong Edit it yourself. Claude's output is a draft, not a verdict.
Session ran long and Claude seems confused Start a new session — Claude reads CLAUDE.md fresh each time
PDF conversion fails or looks garbled Try: Read [filename].pdf and summarise it — direct read often works

After today

Everything from this workshop lives at: https://dissinet.cz/apps/claude-as-assistant/

The three documents to read next (in order): 1. C.leveling-packages — what to do in your first week at Level 2 2. A9.markdown-project-memory — how to build a CLAUDE.md that actually works 3. C.prompts — 20 copy-paste prompts for the tasks you will actually do

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