Your First Chat with Claude Code

You've got Claude Code running in a folder. Let's have a real conversation with it.

Type this and press Enter:

what's in this folder, and what would you guess it's for?

Claude will actually look at the files around it and answer in plain English. This is the part that surprises people: it can open and read the files in the folder you started it in, so it answers from what's really there, not just from your words. No uploading, no copy-pasting.

Now ask it about one specific file. If you have a document, spreadsheet, or PDF nearby, try:

read my-notes.txt and tell me what it says in three bullet points

Swap my-notes.txt for a real filename. Claude opens it, reads it, and summarizes. Ask a follow-up in the same breath, like which of those is most urgent?. It remembers the conversation, so you don't repeat yourself.

You can also just ask what it's good for:

what kinds of things can you help me with in this folder?

That's the whole trick to a first session: talk to it like a sharp assistant who happens to be sitting inside your folder. You describe what you want in normal words, and it does the looking, reading, and work. If its answer isn't quite right, tell it what to fix and it tries again.

When you're done, type /exit to close it. Nothing on your computer changes unless you actually ask it to change something, so poking around is completely safe.

Try this now: ask give me a one-sentence summary of every file in this folder. Watch it work through each one.

Where to go next: Your First Real Win points Claude Code at a messy folder and cleans it up for real. For the official version of this first-session walkthrough, see Anthropic's Claude Code quickstart.