# Your first session

Course: Claude Code from Zero — https://zero2vibecode.com/learn/claude-code
Canonical URL: https://zero2vibecode.com/learn/claude-code/0-3-first-claude-code-session

You start Claude Code inside a project folder, and that folder is its whole world. Where you launch it matters more than anything you type afterwards.

Two steps, in this order. Move into your project. Start the agent.

```
cd todo-app
claude
```

That is it. The session opens in the same terminal window, and you type in plain English.

## The folder is the point

Claude Code works on the folder you started it in. Everything inside is fair game; everything outside is not there as far as it is concerned.

Start it in your home folder and you have pointed a coding agent at your entire home folder — your downloads, your other projects, everything. Start it in the project and it sees the project.

**A two-second check.** 
Before you launch, run `ls`. If what prints looks like your project, you are in the right place. If it looks like your life, you are not.

Do that now in the terminal below: move into `todo-app`, list what is inside, then start the session.

## What you see when it starts

A prompt, waiting for you. You type a request the way you would say it to a colleague:

```
explain what app.js does
```

It reads the file and answers. No special syntax, no keywords, no prompt formula. If your sentence would make sense to a person who has your project open, it will make sense here.

## Your first turn should read, not write

The temptation is to open a session and immediately ask for a feature. Resist it for one turn.

Ask it to explain something you already understand. Now you have a free, zero-risk test of whether it actually sees what you think it sees. If the explanation is wrong, nothing has been damaged, and you have learned something important before it touched a file.

## Ending and coming back

You leave a session the way you leave any terminal program, and the conversation is saved. Claude Code can continue your most recent conversation or resume an earlier one, so a session survives you closing the laptop.

Sessions are not permanent storage, though. Anything that must survive — a decision, a convention, a command that has to be run — belongs in a file in the project. That is level 3.

**Before your first real edit.** 
Make sure the project is in Git and your work is committed. Not because the agent is reckless, but because "undo" is a solved problem in Git and an unsolved problem in a terminal. You are two lessons away from letting it change files.

<Faq>
  
  
</Faq>

## Try it yourself

Your first message in a fresh session.