Set Up Your AI Coding Workspace

📘 Vibe Coding Course · Lesson 2 of 6

You need three things: a place to run code, an AI assistant that can see your project, and a folder that keeps each tool tidy.

1. Install Python

Download Python from python.org (tick “Add Python to PATH” on Windows). Check it works:

python --version

2. Pick an assistant

There are two styles of AI coding assistant:

• Editor assistants built into a code editor (for example VS Code with an AI extension, or AI-first editors). You see the files and the changes side by side.
• Agentic assistants such as Claude Code that run in a terminal or desktop app, read your whole folder, run the code themselves and fix their own errors.

For beginners, an agentic assistant is often easiest: you describe the tool, it writes the files, runs them and shows you the result.

3. One folder per tool

csv-cleaner/
  README.md          what the tool does, in your words
  sample/            2-3 small, anonymised example files
  expected/          what the output should look like for those samples
  cleaner.py         written by the AI

The sample and expected folders are your secret weapon: the AI can test its own work against them, and so can you.

4. The rhythm

1. Describe one small step.
2. Let it write and run the code.
3. Compare the output with what you expected.
4. Describe what is wrong, specifically.

Small steps win. “Read the CSV and print the first 5 rows” then “remove blank rows” beats “clean my data” in one go.