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Multi-week series · Week 1 of 8 · ~2 hours of class + lab
This is the only lecture with heavier-than-usual manual setup — from Week 2 onwards, almost every step is a single spoken prompt. The goal of the lab is to get from “no dev tools installed” to “Cursor just deployed an empty Next.js site to Vercel under my account, and I watched it happen.”

Three AI environments

Cursor (primary IDE), Claude Code (terminal-native), Gemini CLI (free-tier scripting).

MCP + skills

Install a Skill and an MCP server; turn an AI chat into a tool-using agent.

First AI deploy

Watch Cursor call the Vercel CLI on your behalf and return a live *.vercel.app URL.

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Learning objectives

By the end of this session, you should be able to:
  • Install and sign into the three AI coding environments we use all term — Cursor, Claude Code, and Gemini CLI — and know when to reach for each one.
  • Install a Skill and an MCP server into Claude Code / Cursor and describe, in one sentence, what each extension lets the AI do on your behalf.
  • Recognise and apply the delegation rules — know which operations to hand off to AI through a CLI or MCP server, and which (OAuth, DNS, provider-side credentials) you must do with your own hands.

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Core topics

  • Why “natural language is the source code” — the doctrine that runs through every later week.
  • The three AI environments — Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI — when to use each.
  • What MCP servers and Skills are, and how they turn an AI chat into a tool-using agent.
  • Voice-first prompting with Wispr Flow (optional but strongly recommended).
  • GitHub as the source-of-truth layer that every later week’s deploy flow depends on.

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Tools introduced this week

ToolPurpose
CursorPrimary IDE; built-in AI chat; all weekly work lives here
Claude CodeTerminal-native AI with MCP + Skills; preferred for the Week 8 PDF flow
Gemini CLIFree-tier AI for throwaway scripts and quick explorations
Wispr FlowVoice-to-text; dictate long prompts without typing
GitHubSource of truth; auto-triggers every Vercel deploy
Vercel CLIAI invokes it to deploy, read logs, manage env vars
Neon CLI + Neon MCPAI invokes them to provision databases and auth (from Week 4)
Typst skillAI invokes it to generate pixel-perfect PDFs (used in Week 8)
No prerequisites. This is the entry point. If you can install software on your laptop and sign in with a Google or GitHub account, you have everything you need.

Download Week 1 PDF

Full lecture · 623 KB — Session plan, hands-on lab steps, troubleshooting.

Continue to Week 2

Deploy your personal website