Just having a beginner win!

🔥

15d • Wins

This is my first beginner win and honestly kind of embarrassing how obvious it was 😅

I've been trying to build with Claude Code. Just playing with and see where it goes. Every time I ran it, the output was a mess. Things didn't work, didn't connect and I had no idea why. I thought I was doing something wrong with the tool itself.

I wasn't. I was doing something wrong with my prompts.

What I was doing:

I threw everything at it at once. "Build me an inbox tool that reads my emails, filters the unread ones, summarizes each message and shows me the most important ones first."

Claude would try to do ALL of it at once and it fell apart every time.

So I took a step back and looked at what I was actually asking. I realized I was basically asking Claude to build an entire app in one go. How embarrassing is that...

So what I changed: I just asked for one thing at a time.

Step 1: "Build a tool that reads my inbox."

Step 2: "Now filter the unread emails only."

Step 3: "Add a short summary for each email."

Same goal. Completely different results.

To my surprise it actually worked. I understood what was happening at every step.

What I learned: Claude Code isn't a mind reader. The more focused your prompt, the better the output. Treat it like a conversation, not a wishlist.

If you're just starting out, try breaking things down into smaller steps. It made a world of difference for me.

What's a mistake you made early on that taught you the most? 😎

0 comments

Just having a beginner win!