Point Claude at a Folder — and Build Your First Real Thing

Last lesson you learned to read the screen — every control on it, right down to the little folder name tucked at the bottom. You finished able to name everything you were looking at. So here's the question that's probably itching by now: okay, I can see it all… what do I actually hand it to work on?

The answer is wonderfully small. You give it a folder.

Your project is just a folder

When people say the word project, it sounds big and official, like something you need a plan and a license for. It isn't. A project, to Claude Code, is just a folder on your computer — the same humble kind you'd make to keep holiday photos or tax receipts in one place.

You point Claude at one folder, and from that moment it becomes Claude's whole world for the session. Everything inside it — every file, every sub-folder — Claude can see, open, and change. You don't upload anything. You don't paste files into a chat. The folder is the material it works with. (That little folder name at the bottom of the screen from last lesson? That's the app telling you which folder Claude is pointed at right now.)

Picture a simple one:

Point Claude at my-project, and all of that is on the table — the web page, the styles, your notes, the spreadsheet tucked inside data. That's the whole mental model, and it's the most important one in the course.

Prove it to yourself

Before you ask it to build anything, do this tiny thing. It's the fastest way to make "it can see my files" stop being a claim you're taking on faith and start being something you've watched happen. In the prompt box, just ask:

What files can you see in here?

It'll answer by listing them right back to you — the actual files in your actual folder. That's the click moment. It isn't guessing about your work; it's looking at it.

Now the other half, which matters just as much: it can see what's inside the folder, and nothing outside it. The folder is a fence as much as it is a window. The family budget in some other folder, the rest of your computer — out of view, untouched, unless you specifically hand over access. That boundary is a feature, not a limit: it's how you keep Claude focused on exactly the work you meant, and nothing else.

Your first real build

Here's the loop that every single thing in Claude Code comes down to: describe → it builds → you look → you nudge. Let's run it once, for real, so you've actually felt it.

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A project can be more than one folder

Most of the time, one folder is your whole project and you'll never think about this again. But every so often your stuff genuinely lives in two places — say the web page is in one folder and a pile of images you want to use sits in another.

When that happens, you can add a second folder to the same session. In the app, the folder control you used to pick the first one also lets you add more — that's the + → Add folder item you spotted in the cockpit tour. If you'd rather just type it, there's a command for exactly that:

/add-dir ../product-images

Both do the same thing: they widen Claude's world to include that second folder too (the proper name for these extras is additional working directories, if you ever see the phrase). Don't overthink it — reach for this only when your work honestly spans two spots, and ignore it happily the rest of the time.

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A peek inside: the .claude folder

Poke around your project and you might spot a folder you don't remember making: .claude. Don't worry — you didn't do anything wrong, and you don't need to open it.

That's Claude Code's own little cupboard, where it keeps its things — skills, settings, and sub-agents (words that'll mean something soon enough). The dot in front is just an old convention for "tucked away, not for everyday poking." For now, that's all you need: it's Claude's, not yours to manage, and we'll open that cupboard properly in later lessons.

Good to know: how Claude finds a file

This next bit goes a step deeper than you need to start. Meet it now, let it sit, and it'll quietly pay off later. If you're itching to go build, skip it with a clear conscience.

When you mention a file, you can point at it three ways — think of it like telling a friend where you live:

• Just the name — say notes.md and Claude looks around the folder for it. Quick and friendly, like saying "the Johnsons' place." Perfectly fine, until there happen to be two Johnsons.
• A relative path — data/sales.csv means "from this folder, go into data, then sales.csv." Directions starting from where you already are. (That's the very spreadsheet from the tree up top.)
• The full path — the complete address, all the way from the top of your computer. Longer to write, but unambiguous from anywhere.

Today, just naming the file is almost always plenty. The reason to know the other two now is that this small name-vs-path choice grows into a real little technique later — once you start writing your own instructions and skills, a few lessons out.

So here you are: Claude Code is pointed at your folder, it can see your files, and it just made you something real — then changed it on your word. Which raises the very next question, and it's a slightly nervous one: if it can open and change things in my folder on its own… how much do I let it do without checking, and how much do I want to approve first? That's exactly what we'll settle next.