Had my first session with Claude Code and CoWork

I can see why this is so addicting. But let me share my first experience and maybe some of y'all can help me do it better.

TLDR: I dipped my toe in the water and am getting acclimated and it's not as scary as I thought. Planning and the initial build is super fun, but troubleshooting is a slog and hits my rate limits quickly. I haven't set up the GSD framework yet, but am thinking maybe that could help me.

My First Experience:

I signed up for the $20/mo Pro Plan, downloaded Claude Desktop to my Mac. Saw there are three tabs (Chat, Code, and CoWork). I started with CoWork because I heard it's more familiar for non-coders. After introducing myself and asking what it could do, I asked it to help me find large files on my Mac and help me clear up storage space.

I was scared to grant it access to my computer at first, which I told Claude, and it reassured me it wouldn't delete anything without my permission and is safe to use. Okay so I let it do it's thing. Without going into the details, it helped me clear up tons of storage space and identify hard to find cache files and other shit that takes up a lot of space. After about 30-60 minutes I was satisfied and wanted to try Claude Code next.

So I hopped over to the Code tab (not using terminal yet). I sent Claude a message in the chat and introduced myself and asked what it could do. After chatting briefly, I asked if it could help me with a task I was doing earlier, which was compressing MP3 files to fit within Notion's 5MB file upload limit on the free plan. I also wanted to compress large PDF files that were taking up a ton of storage in my iBooks (some were 100+ MB) and didn't need to be.

After trying out various online file converters and compressors, I asked if Claude could build me a simple right-click "compress PDF" action. During our chat it became clear I wanted it to also compress MP3s and even images. So I asked it to plan out an app which Claude named "Squeeze" that would intelligently reduce the file size of whatever I threw at it. It recommended installing tools like FFMPEG, Ghostscript, and various image compressors like mozJPEG, etc. Which it did on its own. I didn't have to figure this out. Cool.

Things were going swimmingly for awhile but was getting stuck creating the right-click menu with Apple's Automator vs Shortcuts workflow. After troubleshooting a bit, I hit my rate limit and had to wait a few hours before working again.

Then this morning I woke up and started troubleshooting with it again, it seemed to struggle fixing the bugs and I kept having to tell it how it wasn't working. Then I hit my rate limit much faster than before. Assuming it's because my chat is now getting fairly long.

So where do I go from here? I don't want to upgrade to the Max plans yet, not before I get the hang of CC and learn to optimize how I use it so I don't hit rate limits and waste valuable time.

Another thing I noticed was it would ask for permission repeatedly. It seemed after every prompt it would inevitably need my permission so I had to keep coming back to the chat and click "always allow for this session" over and over. Probably 20-30 times at least in this one session. Is this how it always works?

Would the GSD framework help with this? I haven't set that up yet and I'm still just in the Claude Desktop app. Should I move to Terminal or maybe something else like Warp (don't even know the difference yet).

Having fun so far. But could use some tips on what to do next. Thanks!

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