The Beginner's Setup Guide

Three steps, about an hour. One command installs everything, then Claude walks you through the logins and helps you put your first site online. The rest of this page explains what got set up and why, so read it whenever you want.

1. 1Install Ghostty. Download it from ghostty.org, drag it into Applications, and open it. Ghostty is the terminal: the window where you type to Claude.
2. 2Paste this into Ghostty and press Enter. It asks for your Mac password once, then installs everything in about 15–20 minutes. Anything you already have is skipped.

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://aijourney.dustinwells.com/setup.sh)"

1. 3Log in to Claude and follow the wizard.When the install finishes, Claude opens. Choose “Claude account with subscription” and log in in your browser. The setup wizard then starts on its own and walks you through 1Password, GitHub, Vercel, Google, Granola, and writing your CLAUDE.md, one step at a time.

Everything runs on the computer you already have. AI agents in your terminal write the code, save it to GitHub, and Vercel puts it on the internet at your domain. No servers to rent or secure.

1. 01

   Your laptop

   Ghostty terminal

2. 02

   Your AI

   Claude Code

3. 03

   GitHub

   your code

4. 04

   Vercel

   live on the internet

5. 05

   Your domain

   GoDaddy DNS

Two things sit alongside all of it: Supabase holds your app data and user accounts, and 1Password holds every password and API key so nothing secret ever ends up in your code.

Use one email address for all of them (ideally one on your own domain), turn on two-factor authentication everywhere, and save every login in 1Password as you go.

Day 1: the core

Month 1+: when you build real apps

Only if you build mobile apps

These steps are for a Mac. On Windows, run wsl --install in PowerShell, open the Ubuntu app it installs, and use the Linux commands from the VPS path inside it.

# Homebrew (follow the prompts it prints at the end)
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

# Apps
brew install --cask ghostty 1password 1password-cli claude

From here on, open Ghostty and use it for everything.

# Developer basics
brew install node git gh
mkdir -p ~/projects

# Claude Code (Anthropic): your main tool
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

# Deploy tools
npm install -g vercel

# Supabase CLI, when you add a database
brew install supabase/tap/supabase

# A browser your agents can drive to test your sites
npm install -g playwright && npx playwright install chromium

This is what turns an AI chat into an AI that can do things. Each login below happens once.

Sign in to each tool

Google: Gmail, Calendar, Drive

1. 1In claude.ai, open Settings → Connectors and connect Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive.
2. 2Claude Code picks up those same connectors when you're logged in with the same Claude account.
3. 3Try it: claudethen “What's on my calendar this week?”

Granola: your meetings

Install the Granola desktop app and sign in with Google so it can see your calendar. It records and transcribes each meeting and writes the notes. Then connect Granola to Claude (claude.ai → Settings → Connectors). Now you can ask “What did we decide in Tuesday's call?” or “Draft a follow-up email from this morning's client call.”

GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, Stripe inside Claude

In Claude Code, type /pluginand install the official GitHub, Vercel, Supabase, and Stripe plugins. Each asks you to log in once. After that, “why did my last deploy fail?” or “add a column to the users table” just works. Any other service with an MCP server connects the same way:

claude mcp add --transport http <name> <server-url>
claude mcp list   # see what's connected

API keys: GoDaddy, Anthropic, and the rest

Some services only offer an API key. The pattern is always the same:

1. 1Create the key in the service's developer dashboard (GoDaddy: developer.godaddy.com/keys).
2. 2Save it in 1Password straight away.
3. 3In the 1Password app, turn on Settings → Developer → Integrate with 1Password CLI. Now op can read your keys after a Touch ID prompt.
4. 4Tell Claude which 1Password item holds the key. It fetches the key when it needs it and never writes it into your code.

Claude Code reads a file called CLAUDE.md at the start of every session. Put your house rules there once and every session follows them. Mine is hundreds of lines after a year. Start with this:

# How I work
- All code lives in ~/projects/ on this Mac. Commit and push to GitHub when done.
- Deploy websites to Vercel with --prod unless I say otherwise.

# Secrets
- Never hardcode secrets. Every key lives in 1Password.
- When I give you a new key, save it to 1Password before using it.

# Safety
- Never send an email, post publicly, or spend money without my explicit yes. Draft first.
- Never delete data or overwrite files without showing me what's there first.

# Accounts
- DNS: GoDaddy via API, key in 1Password
- Database: Supabase

When Claude makes a mistake, don't just fix it. Say “add a rule to CLAUDE.md so this doesn't happen again.” That habit does more for you than anything else in this guide.

CLAUDE.md sets the rules. Skillsteach the moves. A skill is a written playbook that Claude loads only when the task calls for it, like “interview me about this plan” or “review this before I ship.” A plugin is a bundle of skills you install in one step. These are the ones I keep installed once I start building real apps.

# Skills: each command asks which agents to install to
npx skills@latest add mattpocock/skills -g --skill grill-me tdd improve-codebase-architecture
npx skills@latest add vercel-labs/agent-browser -g
npx skills@latest add https://github.com/dodo-digital/evolving-skills/tree/main/plugins/evolving-skills/claude-skills -g

# The browser those agents drive
npm install -g agent-browser
agent-browser install

/plugin marketplace add EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin
/plugin install compound-engineering@compound-engineering-plugin

Restart Claude Code afterward, then type /to see your new skills. You rarely need to call them by name: say “grill me on this plan” and Claude picks the right one.

Where they come from

• grill-me, tdd, improve-codebase-architecture: github.com/mattpocock/skills
• agent-browser: github.com/vercel-labs/agent-browser
• Evolving Skills: github.com/dodo-digital/evolving-skills
• Compound Engineering: github.com/EveryInc/compound-engineering-plugin

Add $99/yr for Apple and $25 once for Google Play if you ship mobile apps. Prices are approximate as of 2026. Start with the left column; you'll know when you need the right one because you'll hit the limits.

I moved to a VPS around month five. You're ready when a few of these are true:

• You want something to run on a schedule (a daily report, a sync, a content agent) even when your laptop is closed
• Long AI tasks keep dying because your laptop went to sleep
• You want to run several AI workers at once and check back later
• You want to pick up the same session from your phone
• You'd rather keep experiments off your personal machine

Until then, two free options cover simple scheduled jobs from a laptop-only setup: Vercel Cron (runs a route in your app on a schedule) and GitHub Actions (runs a script in your repo on a schedule). Ask Claude to set either up.