Claude Code Training Course

A comprehensive training presentation and hands-on lab exercises for using Claude Code in professional software development workflows.

🎯 What You'll Learn

This course teaches professional developers how to:

• Create complete projects from scratch using Claude Code
• Navigate and understand complex codebases with AI assistance
• Implement the "branch-first" workflow for safe experimentation
• Generate comprehensive tests and documentation
• Refactor legacy code and modernize applications
• Use advanced Claude Code features like Plan Mode, /code-review, subagents, and dynamic workflows
• Extend capabilities with Skills and Plugins for specialized workflows
• Customize output styles for different learning preferences
• Understand and leverage subagents for complex multi-step tasks
• Implement sophisticated automation with hooks and event-driven workflows

🚀 Course Materials

This repository contains all the materials for the Claude Code Training course:

• slides.md: The main Slidev presentation with interactive demos
• lab_handout.md: Progressive hands-on labs from beginner to advanced
• instructor-guide.md: Instructor-led demos and exercises using real codebases
• half-day-outline.md: Condensed outline for half-day training sessions
• events/: Event-specific descriptions and course configurations
• glossary.md: Vocabulary reference for the course concepts
• webinar_slides.md / webinar_demos.md: Shorter 90-minute webinar variant
• custom-commands.md: Skills-first walkthrough of workflow automation, with the legacy command form for comparison
• skills/: Ready-to-copy skills, each demonstrating a different frontmatter capability
• commands/: One legacy .claude/commands/ example kept for contrast with skills
• skills-and-plugins/: Larger teaching-library skills and a plugin example used in Lab 6
• hooks-examples/: Advanced hook patterns for workflow automation
• sample-claude-md/: Example CLAUDE.md files worth borrowing from
• exercises/: A collection of diverse sample projects:
  • Python: Flask web app (weather-app) and legacy API (flask-api)
  • JavaScript/TypeScript: Interactive web application (lyrics-trainer)
  • Java: Modern Spring Boot service (certificate-service) and legacy Grails app (shopping-service)

🏃‍♀️ Running the Presentation

1. Install dependencies:

   pnpm install

2. Start the presentation:

   pnpm dev

3. Open your browser at http://localhost:3030

📄 Latest PDF

A current PDF of the slides is rebuilt automatically whenever slides.md lands on main and attached to a rolling release. Stable download URL:

https://github.com/kousen/claude-code-training/releases/latest/download/slides-export.pdf

No PDF is committed to the repo — it lives only in GitHub Releases, built by .github/workflows/build-slides-pdf.yml.

📚 Getting Started with the Labs

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed and configured
• Signed in with a Claude subscription (Pro / Max / Team / Enterprise) via /login, or an API key: export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY="your-key"
• Development environment for Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, and Java
• VS Code (optional, for IDE integration demonstrations)
• Docker (optional, for MCP and containerized workflow examples)

Lab Structure

The lab_handout.md contains six progressive labs:

0. Project Creation from Scratch - Build a lyrics display app (recreates the lyrics-trainer origin story)
1. Claude Code Basics - Interface and project exploration
2. Code Exploration - Understanding complex codebases
3. Test Generation - Automated testing with AI
4. Documentation Creation - Professional documentation workflows
5. Legacy Code Refactoring - Modernizing Grails/Groovy applications
6. Advanced Workflows - Plan Mode, Skills, Plugins, Output Styles, Hooks, CLAUDE.md, Agent Teams, and Dynamic Workflows

Skills (formerly Custom Commands)

As of Claude Code 2.1, custom slash commands are merged into skills. Students can explore and use the pre-built ones:

• Copy a skill directory from skills/ to ~/.claude/skills/ (user scope) or .claude/skills/ (project scope)
• See custom-commands.md for the walkthrough; commands/docs.md shows the legacy form for comparison
• Skills include Java modernization, Spring generators, security reviews, and onboarding

Teaching Notes

The instructor-guide.md file contains detailed instructor guidance with specific prompts and a progressive story arc using the flask-api project as the primary demonstration vehicle.

🏗️ Course Philosophy

• Branch-First Workflow: Emphasizes safe experimentation through Git branching
• Practical Learning: Real-world projects across multiple languages and frameworks
• Progressive Complexity: From simple tasks to advanced enterprise workflows
• Best Practices: Professional development patterns and security considerations
• Extensibility First: Skills and plugins provide persistent, reusable domain expertise
• Adaptive Learning: Output styles and hooks adapt to diverse learning contexts
• Intelligent Automation: Subagents handle specialized tasks automatically for optimal performance

📖 Companion Book

Claude Code: Up and Running — Harness the Power of Agentic Coding (O'Reilly Media), by Ken Kousen: https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/claude-code-up/0642572388782/

👤 Author

Ken Kousen

• Email: ken.kousen@kousenit.com
• Website: kousenit.com
• Course: Professional Claude Code Training