Transcription
If you want to get way better than you are right now at Cloud code, I think the best way to do that is not by watching another tutorial at first. It is to do something like this, a 10x cloud code challenge that I built out for you. So let me just hop into this and explain how it all works.
So what I've done is I've built out a challenge for you. You can get it at testandprod.co and we will walk through this step by step. You go to testandprod.co. You click on AI Engineering Challenges. You can see I'm making ones for the conductor framework V2, since that just launched, Codex and Gemini, CLI. But we're gonna start with the Cloud Code Challenge. So click on the Cloud Code Challenge and you'll land here. And this is just meant to make you struggle through stuff, whether you're brand new to cloud code or a seasoned pro. This will actually help because the point is not to build something here, it's to learn Claude code by building something. And the philosophy it's built on is you don't get good at a tool by watching someone else use it. You get good at a tool by struggling through it yourself. That might sound counterintuitive, but I promise you, if you set a timer for two hours and get through this, you'll be 10 times better than you are right now, no matter where you're starting at.
So to start with, the tools that you're gonna need are the cloud code CLI, how to install that. So I've got a link to that, the conductor framework. This is not a tutorial about the conductor framework, but I think using something like this will get you used to working with context engineering, which is gonna be hugely important in the future. I mean, it wasn't that big of a deal in 2025, but I promise you in 2026 you'll start seeing more things and using things like the conductor framework more. You need the cursor IDE. This is for people who are scared of the terminal. Rip the band-aid off. Get cursor, open up a terminal in cursor, and the Claude Chrome extension where you can now use Claude in Chrome. This is a great tool to use GitHub. I know some people are scared of GitHub. I can see in my comments that people aren't really using GitHub. This is a tool that you will need, maybe not in the far future, but for at least the next year, this will really help you. Don't let GitHub or the terminal scare you, I promise you can make it through it. And then Whisper Flow. As you notice, I don't type anymore. I just use Whisper Flow, which is a tool, probably the highest leverage tool that exists for AI engineering. And this is where you can just speak your commands in. So if you're not using Whisper Flow yet, do it. They've got a free version that you can start with.
But this project is to build a simple classified site. Think Craigslist. I intentionally built this because it's not crazy and flashy. It's an ugly old website that's super functional, and this is not about building a crazy website with a bunch of cool animations and stuff. This is about building a simple website and learning the tools. So I intentionally picked Craigslist. But it's got all the requirements here that you'll need to build, and it's got some constraints. You can change this out if you want, but I recommend using Next.js, Tailwind CSS. Don't build a backend for this. We have a bonus section about this. This is not about having to deal with a bunch of environment variables and setting up deployment and databases. At this point, this is just to get you used to Claude skills and cloud code. You can mock up the data with JSON or hard code them, and it must look like a real product, not a demo.
Okay? So if you don't know what any of these words are, I could explain them to you, but I'm not. So if you don't know what JSON means or what it means when you hard code something, look these up in cloud code in your terminal. When you're doing it, it's more than capable of explaining them to you. This is not a race. But start with phase zero.
So phase zero is just your setup. Some things you want to make sure you have is you want to have cursor installed. You want to have cloud code CLI working in your terminal. You want the conductor framework V2 downloaded and installed on your system. And you want to give cloud code this master prompt as soon as you get into Claude code. So to get the master prompt, you just open here, click copy and paste this into cloud code. And then cloud code will know that you're not trying to build a real thing here, per se. You're doing a code challenge to get better at using cloud code. This will really help.
Next, move on to phase one. So you're going to define what you're building before you build it. This is a huge skill that I see people glossing over in a lot of tutorials. They just get in and start building flashy stuff. Go through a little planning phase. So some things here you want to do are get a GitHub repo created. Not cloned. I need to erase that. You want to have one vision document. There's a lot of documents you can build in the conductor framework, but just start with a basic vision document. Cloud code can help you walk through this. Make a PRD with requirements and stack decisions. So this just means make a PRD. There's a template for this in the conductor framework, and have a discussion with Claude Code. Treat it like it's an architect or a lead engineer and say, what stack should we use for this? I've given you some suggestions, but you need to know that this is supposed to be a simple site with no backend is the main things you need to know. So talk about stack decisions and then make one implementation plan. Again, Claude Code has something for this. I'm not gonna go into it deeply, but there's also an implementation plan packaging system that works inside of the conductor framework. I highly suggest you use that.
Then you'll want to make a Claude MD file after you have your stack installed. So a stack is just the technology you're gonna be using to build this. And I made a video yesterday or the day before, I think, where I talked about some of Claude code's most underrated features, and one of those is the, I think it's the `init` you do slash `init` and then cloud code will go through your entire stack and make a Claude MD file that explains what your technology stack is and where things are located, so it can easily reference stuff inside of your stack. If you've ever been building something and things go haywire and you don't know where things are, it's because you didn't build an indexing file. Cloud code has this built in for you, so use that. Then you'll want your planning docs committed to GitHub along with your stack. If you don't know how to commit stuff to GitHub, you have the best teacher ever. I mean, I hardly run commands. I'm forgetting old GitHub commands, which is crazy. But Claude Code can run all of Git and GitHub for you. If you don't know what those are, don't go watch a 10-hour tutorial, just start using it. Even if you're terrible at it, cloud code will help and it will explain stuff to you along the way.
Next is extra execution. The important part here is that you work with Claude like a real developer would. So go through this in your implementation plan and it'll take you through things step by step in the implementation plan that you've already set up with Claude Code. The important part here is not that you get everything right, it's that you understand what happened. Implementation plan. So after each step, take five or 10 minutes and go through with cloud code and say, "Hey, I want to ask some questions about what you just did," and have cloud code answer those. You'll want to have a scaffolded Next.js project. You want all pages built: home, category, listing, post form, and the other pages. You want to have your search functionality working. Your responsive design is complete. So make sure that it works on mobile. You want to have your mock data in place, whether you've made that some dynamic or just hardcoded it. And then you want a clean commit history with feature branches merged to main. GitHub, if you don't know what that thing means, all of those words mean you want to learn how to work with branches. Again, just tell Claude code that you want to build this implementation on a feature branch and it will know exactly what you're talking about. This will, the problem this solves for a lot of people, and I've even seen this in my comments, is if you start building on feature branches, that means you can screw up as bad as you want and it doesn't get committed into your main code. This is a common basic, extremely helpful. It's like the heartbeat of what Git and GitHub actually is. You build stuff on a feature branch so you don't screw up your entire product. You can learn how to do that. Claude will walk you through it.
Next, you want to review and iterate. After you have everything up and working, go back with Claude and review everything that you've done. Ask it to explain what's happening. Ask it to explain what some of the code is doing. Use some pre-commit hooks here while you're iterating. You can learn what hooks are by asking Claude code, and it will help you while you're going through iterations and committing your code to GitHub. Make some feedback and make sure all your feedback is addressed. If you want to, you can do a UX review and try to make the UX a little better, and then push your final version to GitHub and make sure you are ready to deploy.
Okay, that would bring us to the next stage, which is a bonus stage. You don't have to do this, 'cause I think by the time you get through phases one, two, and three, and zero, you'll be feeling very confident with cloud code. But if you want to move on to the next stage, it's to build a backend. This means you're gonna build the database and get ready to deploy it and have real authentication. And all authentication is is how you log in and create a user account. So I would suggest using authentication with Clerk. Make a real database with Supabase and deploy it live through Vercel. And don't use any tutorials to do this. See if you can figure all this stuff out yourself. I promise you, you can. Don't be tempted to watch a tutorial on this stuff. And if you can do this, you'll have a real app up and working with a real database with real user authentication and login. And it might be a little bit more painful than going through a tutorial.
But after you're done with all this, at least through phases 1, 2, 3, and 0, you're gonna definitely have things that you just don't understand that well. That's when you should go watch a tutorial or two about the things you don't understand as well, and let that the tutorials be polished to all this, you know, equity that you've earned doing this for two hours. And I promise you that after two hours you'll be happy you did this, even if it kind of sucks struggling through it.
So some things, oh, this isn't updated yet. I guess I didn't push this yet, but you'll learn about planning mode and Claude doing this. I've got stuff set up in the prompts to show you what the subagents are. You'll learn about the initial Claude commit, not sorry, the Claude init command. You'll understand what to do right is in Claude code. You'll make some of your own Claude skills, although we have a bunch of pre-packaged skills loaded up for you in the conductor framework. You'll learn how to work with hooks. You'll learn how to work with Git and glob or exactly what those things are. You'll see them flying across your screen all the time. You'll be able to use the web search or the cloud code in their Chrome extension to work with that and see what's happening on a webpage without having to take screenshots all the time. And finally, you'll work with Git and GitHub. There's some other skills in here you'll learn too, but I forgot to put those in.
So the rules for this are: struggling is the point. Don't watch a tutorial. Try things that don't work. It's okay to break things in here. Don't get stressed. Read Claude's output carefully. And another tip that I would have for this is maybe have Claude Code read through some of the documentation on Claude's website with you. A big part of building things is not just having the AI do it, but a big part of engineering in general is learning how to read documentation. This is way easier now that we have AI. Iterate and refine the prompts that you're using with Claude. Get conversational with it. This will really help if you're using Whisper Flow. And use the tutor prompts when you're stuck. So I have tutor prompts in here that explain what each phase is doing that you can copy and paste in. And I've tried to make this whole thing to where I give you just enough to get going and struggle through it, not explain how to do everything or not leave you with nothing. I'm trying to find that right balance.
So I would love to hear some feedback if you try this out, because I don't know if I've gone too far in one direction or the other, making it too easy or too hard. And if you are reading this and you are a more experienced developer, just up the game a bit. Go to the Claude documentation or watch that video I made a day or two ago that talks some about some of Claude's underrated features. Look at the ones that you're not familiar with, like maybe hooks or how to really work in a different way with the subagents or write your own Claude skills and add some of those into this challenge. But that is all. Let me know how you like this and I will add more here in the future if this goes well. And good luck.