Claude Code Setup + Workflows

Learning objectives

• Install and configure Claude Code for a dedicated Reddit-ops repository.
• Write a CLAUDE.md capturing project conventions, ethics rules, and file pointers.
• Explain and follow the research-plan-execute-review-ship loop.
• Cite Anthropic's own growth-marketing case study as proof this is usable by non-engineers.
• State explicitly what must never live inside Claude Code's autonomous execution: any real Reddit-publish action.

Prerequisites: Module 6.2 in full.

Core concepts

Claude Code is the terminal-native, agentic counterpart to Claude.ai, and Anthropic's own best-practices documentation is the primary source for running it well: CLAUDE.md as the persistent project-memory file, deliberate context-window management, subagents, slash commands, and plan mode (code.claude.com/docs/en/best-practices). Anthropic's privacy-preserving analysis of roughly 400,000 real Claude Code sessions between October 2025 and April 2026 frames the pattern behind effective use as a five-step loop, research, plan, execute, review, ship, with the human holding oversight throughout ("How Claude Code is used in practice," Anthropic Research). Apply that loop literally to a Reddit-ops task: research means pulling the week's new threads; plan means drafting the digest structure; execute means running the scoring and drafting skills; review is the mandatory human gate this course has taught since Stage 1; ship, in this context, is never Claude Code publishing to Reddit, it is a human copying an approved draft into their own browser session.

# CLAUDE.md, reddit-ops repo

## Non-negotiable rules
1. This repo drafts, scores, and reports. It NEVER posts, replies, votes,
   or DMs on Reddit directly. Any tool or MCP server connected here must
   be read/draft-only for write actions.
2. Ethics red lines: see reddit-context/ethics-red-lines.md. No exceptions.

## Conventions
- Brand voice: reddit-context/brand-voice.md
- Subreddit map: reddit-context/subreddit-map.md
- Weekly digest output goes to weekly-digests/YYYY-MM-DD.md for human review.

## Workflow
research -> plan -> execute (skills/subagents) -> human review -> (manual) ship

The credibility case for a non-engineer running this whole stack rests on Anthropic's own experience: its Growth Marketing team, self-described as "a non-technical team of one," used Claude Code to cut ad-creation time from 30 minutes to 30 seconds and increase creative output tenfold ("How Anthropic teams use Claude Code," Anthropic). Nothing about that result required a computer-science background, it required exactly the discipline this lesson teaches: a clear CLAUDE.md, a repeatable loop, and a human staying firmly in the review step. Set up your own reddit-ops repo, initialize Claude Code inside it, and write the CLAUDE.md above before you touch a single skill or subagent, everything in Lessons 6.3.2 and 6.3.3 assumes this file already exists and is correct.

Video lessons

Supporting reading

• Best practices for Claude Code, Claude Code Docs (https://code.claude.com/docs/en/best-practices), the definitive primary-source reference for CLAUDE.md, context management, and the workflow loop.
• How Claude Code is used in practice, Anthropic Research (https://www.anthropic.com/research/claude-code-expertise), the empirical basis for the research-plan-execute-review-ship loop taught in this lesson.
• How Anthropic teams use Claude Code (PDF) (https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/58284b19e702b49db9302d5b6f135ad8871e7658.pdf), the "non-technical team of one" case study and its quantified productivity gains.

Exercise

Initialize Claude Code inside a new reddit-ops repo. Write the CLAUDE.md above with your own product name, subreddit, and ethics doc pointers filled in. Run one research-only task (pull a summary of this week's threads in one anchor subreddit) and narrate which loop stage you're in at each point.

Assignment

Submit your finished CLAUDE.md and a one-paragraph reflection connecting your own first Claude Code session to the five-stage loop, naming where you personally had to step in as the "review" gate.

Claude workflow

• Skill idea: a "loop-tracker" skill that timestamps and labels each Claude Code session by loop stage (research/plan/execute/review/ship) for later audit.
• Automation: a daily scheduled Claude Code run through the research and plan stages only, always halting before execute for a human to confirm scope before any drafting skill runs.

Expected outcomes

• Working reddit-ops Claude Code repo with a complete CLAUDE.md.
• Can recite the five-stage loop and correctly map a real session onto it.
• Can quote the Anthropic growth-marketing case study's specific numbers (30 min to 30 sec, 10x output) from memory.