My Claude Code Setup: VS Code and a Mess of Folders

My whole Claude Code setup is VS Code, the Claude Code extension, and a Documents folder where every kind of project has its own home. That’s the list. You don’t need to know what you’re doing before you start, because once the initial setup is done, Claude walks you through each step of whatever you’re building. Below: the setup, the folder rule I’d hand any beginner, and a generator that writes your first CLAUDE.md.

This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only point to tools I actually use or would recommend.

The part I’ve skipped in 28 posts

I’ve published 28 posts about things I built. Workflows, trackers, dashboards, little apps for my blogs. Not one of them describes what I build all of it in. I kept assuming the setup wasn’t interesting enough to write about, and when I finally sat down to list it, the list was three items long. Which is the post, it turns out. The thing I thought was too small to mention is the answer to the question I get most: what do I need before I can do this?

The honest version: the setup is the easy part. The part I had to learn was trusting it, and I’ll get to the era where I didn’t.

What do you need to build with Claude Code?

Four things, and two of them are free.

Piece	What it does	Cost
VS Code	The editor everything lives in. Files on the left, Claude on the right.	Free
Claude Code extension	Adds Claude to VS Code. This is the whole “install” step.	Free (needs a Claude plan)
A Claude plan	The account the extension signs into. Plans are on Anthropic’s pricing page.	Paid
One folder	A home for your projects, so Claude knows where to work.	Free

That’s it. No developer environment, no local server, no list of tools with names you have to Google. GitHub is worth adding once you’ve made something you’d be sad to lose, but it’s not a day-one requirement.

How do you set up Claude Code in VS Code?

Install the editor, add the extension, sign in, open a folder. In order:

1. Download VS Code and install it like any other app. 2. Open the Extensions panel inside VS Code and search for “Claude Code.” Install it. 3. Sign in with your Claude account when it asks. 4. Make a folder somewhere sane (mine live in Documents) and open it in VS Code. 5. Type what you want to build in plain English.

Step 5 is where the setup post ends and the building starts, and it’s also where I tell you the thing I wish someone had told me: you don’t need to know the next step. Ask. “I want a page where I paste a link and get a summary. Walk me through it.” Claude walks you through it. Once the initial setup is done, everything after is steps, and you’re never the one who has to know the steps in advance.

As for why VS Code and not a plain terminal, my answer is a pile of reasons stacked together. I can see the files and folders change while Claude works instead of trusting a black box. The tab workflow I’ll get to in a minute only exists because the editor holds it. And honestly, the terminal intimidated me, and the extension meant I never needed it. I started here and never found a reason to move.

How should you organize your folders?

One home per kind of thing. That’s the rule, and it’s the first thing I’d tell anyone starting out: get your folders in order before the pile forms.

Mine looks roughly like this:

• A build folder, with my web apps, micro apps, and n8n workflows each in their own subfolder
• A blogs folder, one subfolder per blog
• An images folder for everything visual

Every project gets its own folder inside one of those homes. Claude can work with mess, and mine still feels like a mess at times, but it needs to know which room to look in. When a project has a home, “open the folder and fix the thing” is a two-second start instead of an archaeology dig through Downloads.

Notice what the rule doesn’t require: tidiness. My folders are not tidy. They’re findable, and findable is the whole job.

What ended the copy-paste era?

For a while I built everything in a chat window. I’d describe what I wanted, copy the code out, paste it into a file, run it, copy the error back into the chat, paste the fix back into the file. I was the messenger between the AI and my own computer, and every trip cost me a little focus. Even after I moved into VS Code, I was still copying and pasting between tools for a while, until I figured out MCPs and API connections.

	Building in a chat window	Claude Code in VS Code
Where the code lives	In the chat, until you move it	In your actual files
Who carries changes	You, by copy-paste	Claude edits the files directly
When something breaks	You paste the error back	Claude sees the error and fixes it
Your other tools	You relay what’s in them	Connected, so Claude reads them itself

The connection I felt first was n8n, the tool my automations run in. Before, fixing a workflow meant exporting it, pasting it into a chat, pasting the fix back, and re-importing. After connecting it, “fix the workflow” fixes the workflow. WordPress and Airtable followed, and now a blog post goes from my machine into WordPress as a formatted draft without me touching a paste buffer.

And if MCP and API sound like a wall, this is the part I want you to hear: I didn’t learn any of it alone. Each connection, I told Claude what I wanted to hook up, and it walked me through the setup one step at a time. The scary-sounding parts of this stack are also steps.

What a normal day looks like, for real

Multiple Claude Code tabs, each supposedly its own project. I’d love to tell you I run a disciplined parallel system. It’s chaos, honestly. Tabs pile up, I lose track of which one is doing what, and it works anyway, because each tab keeps its own thread and nothing depends on me remembering. The system tolerates my chaos instead of demanding I fix it first, and for my brain, that’s the feature.

I also work from two machines, a desktop and a laptop, with everything synced through GitHub. Switching computers is one “sync me” at the start of a session. Not instant, not magic, but close enough to feel like one computer most days.

If you want the deeper version of how I bend Claude to my way of working, I customize every Claude Code skill I use, and I wrote up what this whole stack costs me a month with real invoices.

What still bugs me

Three things, so you don’t picture a finished system:

• My folders. I give the “one home per kind of thing” advice and I follow it imperfectly. They still feel like a mess at times.
• Mystery tabs. Coming back to a tab and not remembering what it was mid-way through costs me a re-read every time.
• The wrong machine. Sync mostly works, and still, sometimes the newest version of a thing is on the computer I’m not sitting at because I forgot to push.

None of those has been bad enough to make me change the setup. They’re the rent I pay for working the way I like.

Get your starter CLAUDE.md

There’s one file worth making on day one: a CLAUDE.md. It sits in your folder and tells Claude who you are, what you make, and the rules it should always follow with you. It’s the difference between re-explaining yourself every session and Claude already knowing. Mine is why I can open a tab and say “fix the thing” without a paragraph of context first.

You don’t write it by hand. You answer a few questions and Claude writes it. The generator below asks about your situation and builds a starter CLAUDE.md you can drop into your folder:

Prefer to do it in a conversation? Paste this into Claude and it’ll interview you and write the file itself:

I want to start building things with Claude Code. Interview me, one question at a time, about: what I make or want to make, what folders or projects I already have, which tools and accounts I use (spreadsheets, blogs, stores, anything), and any rules you should always follow when working with me. Keep it to 8 questions or fewer. When we're done, create a CLAUDE.md file in my current folder capturing everything, written so a coding assistant can read it and immediately know how I work. Write the file yourself instead of showing me the text.

Frequently asked questions

Try it yourself

Setting up Claude Code takes one editor, one extension, one sign-in, and one folder, and everything after the setup is steps Claude can walk you through, including the connections you’re not ready for yet. So don’t wait until you understand it all. Open a folder, run the generator above, and tell Claude the first thing you want to build.

And if you’d rather not figure it out solo, AI Automation Society Plus is a community built around learning n8n, Claude, and AI tools without needing a technical background.

I write up what I build here, including the parts I got wrong on the way. Subscribe if you want those write-ups as they land, and in the meantime, go start something.

Related reading

• Software Subscriptions I Cancelled Because I Built My Own
• Claude Code Skill for Writing: Stop Pasting Your Style Guide