# Claude Code For Non-Coders: Everything You Need  **Channel:** Artem Zhutov **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mT_9zr8QQBM **Date processed:** 2026-01-09 --- ## Summary Artem Zhutov presents Claude Code as a general-purpose AI assistant for non-programmers, arguing that despite its name, the tool requires no coding knowledge. Unlike ChatGPT which "lives in a browser tab" and is passive, Claude Code runs directly on your computer and can take real actions: reading files, managing calendars, sending emails, and organizing notes. The core argument is that Claude Code becomes genuinely powerful when paired with Obsidian as a persistent memory system. While ChatGPT forgets who you are between sessions, Claude Code can access your vault's context—your projects, clients, tasks, and preferences—making it a true personal assistant. The CLAUDE.md file serves as the system's memory, loaded at startup. The video culminates in demonstrating "skills"—markdown files that define workflows and automations. Artem shows how skills can route requests (e.g., "start my morning routine" triggers a review skill) and interact with external systems. The emphasis throughout is on building intuition through experimentation rather than memorizing commands. --- ## Key Points - **Claude Code ≠ coding tool** - The name is misleading; it's a general-purpose AI that runs locally and can take real actions on your computer - **Local vs. browser-based AI** - ChatGPT is "trapped in a box" while Claude Code has access to your file system, calendar, and other local resources - **Terminal basics are minimal** - Only need: `pwd` (print working directory), `ls` (list files), `mkdir` (make directory), `cd` (change directory) - **CLAUDE.md is memory** - This file loads at startup and persists context between sessions; Claude can be instructed to document learnings here - **Obsidian provides persistent context** - Stores information about projects, clients, tasks, and preferences that Claude Code can access - **Skills are markdown-based automation** - Stored in `.claude/skills/` folder, they define workflows Claude should follow for specific requests - **Skills can act as routers** - A single skill (e.g., "review") can route to different workflows based on context (morning routine, weekly review, etc.) - **Learning by doing** - Artem emphasizes exploring the system yourself to build intuition about capabilities and limitations --- ## Detailed Notes ### Introduction: Reframing Claude Code [0:00-1:05] - Opens with the counterintuitive claim that Claude Code "has nothing to do with code" - Key distinction: ChatGPT lives in browser, Claude Code lives on computer - ChatGPT is "passive, it can't do real stuff" vs Claude Code "can actually do stuff" - Demo premise: by video end, viewer will install Claude Code and create calendar events ### Terminal Basics [1:23-2:52] - Opens terminal via Applications > Terminal - Four essential commands: - `pwd` - print working directory - `ls` - list directory contents - `mkdir [name]` - create folder - `cd [folder]` - change directory - Shows folders created in terminal appear in Finder - "that's actually real" - Emphasizes: "that's actually everything you need to know about the terminal" ### Installing Claude Code [2:54-3:36] - Google "how to set up Claude Code" - Run installation command from docs - Once installed, run `claude` to start ### Basic Capabilities Demo [3:37-8:51] - **File operations**: Ask Claude to list folders, create markdown files - **Permissions**: Can run with `--dangerously-skip-permissions` flag (only if experienced) - **Calendar integration** [4:39-6:50]: - Query calendar events - Create events (with some struggles in live demo) - Documents process to CLAUDE.md for future reference - **Web search** [6:59-7:50]: Weather lookup and save to file - **File search** [8:02-8:51]: List PDFs modified in last 7 days, open specific files ### Obsidian as Memory Layer [9:05-12:22] - Problem: "every time you start a new session, it's going to forget about who you are" - Obsidian stores context: tasks, clients, preferences, projects - Describes Obsidian as "like Notion" with graph view and "bases" (dashboards) - **CLAUDE.md** is "the most important file" - loads when Cloud starts - Demo: Adding "My name is Artem, you are my personal assistant" → Claude remembers - "This becomes very, very powerful... it's going to know about our clients, projects, tasks, daily notes, everything" ### Practical Workflow Demo [12:22-14:24] - Uses Kanban board in Obsidian for task management - Creates task: "record Cloud Code personal assistant video" - Schedules task to calendar at 3pm - Queries clients needing follow-up - "We can combine those concepts... take actions" - Mentions PDF guide for Obsidian vault setup ### Skills System [14:43-19:33] - Skills = markdown files that define workflows - Location: `.claude/skills/[skill-name]/` - Each skill has description and instructions for Claude - **Examples shown**: - `task-notes` skill for Kanban board interaction - `clients` skill for CRM-like functionality - `excalidraw` skill for diagram creation - **Skills as routers**: Single skill (e.g., "review") routes to appropriate workflow - Morning routine - Weekly review - Monthly review ### Morning Routine Demo [17:32-19:33] - Triggers with "I want to start my morning routine" - Workflow includes: - Check previous day's note - Review active tasks - Check goals, projects, clients - Ask about mood, energy, sleep - Create daily note in Obsidian - Shows resulting daily note with all captured information ### Personal System & Closing [19:33-20:35] - Shows personal vault built over 2 years: "been very much compounding" - Emphasizes making notes "work for you, not just storing them" - Offers free starter kit - Promotes January 27th course for guided setup - Final call to action: "just go and open your terminal... start interacting with the system" --- ## Connections Related vault notes: - [[Tool Use Ep 67 - Claude Code and Obsidian with Artum Zuttov]] - Same creator, previous episode - [[Clark and Chalmers]] - Extended mind thesis relevant to "Obsidian as memory layer" - Substack ideas: Article 9 (Thinking as Textual Transformation), Article 13 (Division of Labour) --- ## My Notes *Space for your own thoughts, reactions, and connections after watching* --- ## Full Transcript <details> <summary>Click to expand transcript</summary> [0:00] What if I told you that there is a tool that can read your files, organize your notes, and send emails, and everyone thinks it's for programmers? [0:08] It's called Cloud Code, and the name is confusing. [0:11] It has nothing to do with code. [0:12] When you hear code, you think, oh, it's for developers, that's not me. [0:16] Neither do I. [0:17] I am a physicist, and Cloud Code is AI that runs on your computer. [0:21] In comparison to a charge GPT, which lives in a browser tab, it's trapped inside of this box. [0:26] It's passive, it can't do real stuff. [0:29] But Cloud Code lives on your computer, and you can think of it as a personal assistant that can do research for you, send emails, access to your calendar, and can actually do stuff. [0:39] For example, I can open my Obsidian vault. [0:42] I can just ask, what are my tasks for today? [0:45] Here you go, that's the answer. [0:47] Cloud Code just gets this information from Obsidian and gives me the output. [0:51] And that's just directly talking to my Kanban board. [0:53] And by the end of the video, you'll open your terminal maybe for the first time, you're going to install Cloud Code, we're going to show some cool use cases that you can create events, reminders for you on your computer. [1:05] Then we're going to make it personal, we connect it to our memory and set up our cloud.md file to make it personal. [1:13] And then we're going to do automation using Cloud Code skills from zero, no coding required, just prompting and using our natural language. [1:23] I'm on Mac. [1:24] I'll just went to my applications and let me search for terminal. [1:27] There you go, I'll just open it. [1:29] Okay, that's it. [1:31] No magic. [1:32] We are here in the terminal. [1:34] It feels like hackers, and here we can start doing something. [1:37] For example, we can like send some commands to our computer. [1:40] We can ask what is the current working directory here. [1:44] Print working directory. [1:46] And there you go, that's my current working directory. [1:48] Also I can list my directories using LS command. [1:52] And there you go, here is all of the files in that folder. [1:58] So let's create a folder. [1:59] We can have a command called mk dir and then we can call it like test folder, test folder. [2:08] Okay, we created the folder. [2:09] Now we can navigate to it. [2:11] Uh let's use command called CD, change directory, test folder, and now we are in that folder. [2:18] And we can also list the files, there is nothing. [2:22] And actually we can find it in Finder. [2:24] So that's the folder we just created. [2:26] So that's actually real. [2:27] And we can create another folder, for example, let's say that's another folder. [2:33] And you see that just appeared here. [2:35] And we can go there and move stuff. [2:37] So that's actually everything you need to know about the terminal, like there is no magic. [2:42] That's kind of to get you started, that's more than enough. [2:47] To actually run Cloud Code. [2:51] And feel like a programmer. [2:52] Okay, so let's move on. [2:54] Right now I just Googled how to set up Cloud Code. [2:58] And there you go, I'll just go to this link and we'll go together with you. [3:03] I'm on Mac OS, here is a command, I'll just run it. [3:07] Great, let's set this up. [3:09] I already have it installed. [3:11] So for you it might be different. [3:12] I think it's going to just tell me that we are good. [3:16] So let's wait for a couple minutes until it's going to finish. [3:20] So right now it's installing it. [3:23] All right, that's it. [3:24] Cloud successfully installed. [3:25] Let's run Cloud to set this up. [3:29] All right, great. [3:31] We are in. [3:32] We are in. [3:32] And now that's the most challenging part, now the rest is very easy. [3:37] You can start interacting with the system. [3:39] For example, I can ask, okay, so what are the folders which I have in in in my folder? [3:45] Okay, Cloud thinks. [3:46] Right now, it executes commands which we were executing before, but on its own. [3:51] Right? [3:52] It answers back to us. [3:54] And it's correct. [3:56] Right? [3:57] Now, can we create a couple of markdown files just for demonstration that we can create files? [4:04] We can ask it to create a files on our computer. [4:07] And let's see them appearing. [4:09] It writes on file, this one, and it asks for permission. [4:14] Now, let's accept it. [4:15] And there you go, here we have two files on our computer as we requested. [4:19] It's going to be asking a lot of permissions. [4:21] And there is a way to avoid it. [4:23] We can just run Cloud with a flag called dangerously skip permissions. [4:28] So only run this if you know what you're doing. [4:31] Because I'm experienced. [4:32] So it's not going to ask me for permission. [4:34] And it just makes the demonstration much easier. [4:38] Let's try something real. [4:39] Let me open my calendar. [4:42] Right? [4:42] And let's say I have an event. [4:44] Here, client check-in. [4:46] I can just say. [4:48] Can you list my events in my demo calendar, please? [4:52] So what do I have for today? [4:55] And you can see how Cloud is actually thinking, right? [4:59] How to go about this task? [5:01] Okay, and it's going to use the query, the calendar app and it's going to get the information. [5:06] And here you go. [5:07] It has information about this event. [5:10] That's just amazing, right? [5:12] It can query information. [5:13] But we can also create events. [5:16] Okay, so let's create the event for today for 6 p.m. [5:19] Let's let's go to the gym. [5:22] Okay, it's a new year. [5:22] New life. [5:23] Let's go to the gym. [5:25] And then at 8 we're going to grab dinner. [5:29] So right now we're going to create two events and hopefully they're going to appear here in our calendar. [5:35] And this is just kind of scratching the surface on what you can do. [5:38] Right? [5:39] Okay, so I think I didn't get it correctly. [5:41] Okay, so can you reschedule events? [5:45] I think they are now at 9:00 p.m. [5:46] So you need to do it properly. [5:48] Okay, sometimes the system is not ideal. [5:50] Right? [5:50] But you can actually tell how to go about this task next time and put it into a memory and it's going to remember that, right? [6:00] And okay, it kind of sees that both events are at 9:00 p.m. and it's going to try to reschedule them. [6:06] It tries really, really hard, but it's failing. [6:09] You know, those live demos, sometimes they're tough. [6:12] Okay, so it deletes the events, and now I think it's going to try a different approach. [6:16] Yeah, it's really exciting to see how system is actually working. [6:20] And there you go. [6:21] Right now it's actually correct. [6:23] And that's what I wanted. [6:26] And now we can capture this interaction. [6:28] So can you document in your memory how to go about creating all these events using proper time? [6:35] It looks for this file called cloud.md, and that's the memory of the system. [6:41] Of this Cloud Code. [6:43] And it's going to right now introduce a change such that next time we're going to run it, it's going to remember how to create those calendar events. [6:50] Right? [6:50] We still need to teach the system to behave how how we want. [6:55] And that's the beauty of it because it's going to be compound over and over time. [6:59] Also, it can search for you, do a deep researches. [7:04] Let's do something simple and quick. [7:06] I want to know what's the weather tomorrow in Waterloo. [7:09] Can you give me a report and write it to a file for tomorrow, it's in Canada? [7:15] Great. [7:16] And by the way, the app which I'm using is Whisperflow. [7:19] It's really amazing. [7:20] So you can see that I just speak and the text just appearing. [7:24] It makes so much easier to interact with those tools. [7:27] Yeah, it feels like a game, you know. [7:29] It now does a web search, forecast for Canada on January 9th. [7:34] And it did one search in 17 seconds. [7:37] And let's see if it can save the report in our computer. [7:42] That's a report. [7:43] There you go. [7:44] Amazing. [7:46] Oh. [7:47] Yeah, and here is the weather. [7:48] And extended outlook. [7:50] Great. [7:51] Great. [7:52] I love that. [7:54] Now, you can it's it's a general purpose agent. [7:56] It can do literally anything, it can analyze your files on your computers. [8:01] One example is. [8:02] So can you list all of my PDFs in my downloads folder which I modified in the last seven days? [8:09] Now it's going to go through that process and search for PDFs in my downloads folder so I don't have to. [8:16] It just saves so much time. [8:19] And for example, can you open my thesis last version? [8:26] It can also like open files for you. [8:30] So here is a report. [8:32] Okay, and here is my PhD thesis which I submitted today. [8:36] That's very cool. [8:37] Exciting times. [8:38] Right, it opened it automatically by using this command. [8:41] This will just like give you some ideas on how can you interact with the system for non-coding use cases. [8:48] And this is just like scratching the surface of what you can do. [8:51] So the goal here is to get into the habit and just try to explore it yourself and build this intuition. [8:56] Right, it can be helpful and where it's going to fail. [8:59] And over time you're going to be learning more and more. [9:02] Okay, so here we can means that Cloud Code is powerful. [9:05] But here is a problem, every time you start a new session, it's going to forget about who you are. [9:10] Right? [9:11] What are your tasks, what are your clients, what are your preferences? [9:15] This is where Obsidian comes in. [9:18] And Obsidian is just up on your computer where you can interact with your notes, you can just have different projects and so on. [9:27] It's like, you know, it's like a notion. [9:29] So you can use your notes in a graph. [9:32] You can display a dashboards. [9:35] Here they call bases, for example, you can have your agenda view, you can have your calendar, here is the Kanban board which you can move around, that becomes very, very powerful where you can build this operating system for yourself. [9:50] Where Cloud is going to be a personal assistant for you. [9:55] And that's the role of Obsidian to store the context about ourselves. [9:59] And for Cloud, the goal is to use this context and do useful stuff. [10:06] And here is the cloud.md, that's the most important file for your cloud because that's the memory. [10:13] It's a file which loaded when you start cloud. [10:16] So let me open this this folder and and just show it to you that that it actually going to remember what's going on here. [10:26] So that's our cloud.md. [10:28] And we are in this folder, Cloud Code Obsidian starter. [10:32] Let's run Cloud with skipped permissions. [10:36] And if that's true, then we can ask a question, for example, what is this vault about? [10:44] Let's say, let's add something. [10:46] My name is Artem, right? [10:50] You are my personal assistant. [10:54] Okay. [10:55] And let's restart Cloud such that it's going to use this new updated file. [11:02] Good. [11:03] And I can ask what's my name? [11:06] And hopefully it's going to answer Artem, your name is Artem. [11:09] Right? [11:10] And that's a confirmation that Cloud understands this information which we loaded into it. [11:17] Now, and this becomes very, very powerful. [11:20] We can set up our Obsidian and it's going to know about our clients, projects, tasks, daily notes, everything, right? [11:28] And you can display them in this nice table view. [11:32] Right, you can filter by active projects, and that becomes very, very powerful where you can build this dashboard for your life. [11:39] Let's say, like what are my active projects? [11:41] Right? [11:42] Let's see how it's going to handle that. [11:44] It's supposed to just give me like these three projects. [11:49] It searches for my files and let's see how it does it. [11:53] Now, here we have all of our projects. [11:57] And they're all in the context. [11:59] Right? [12:00] Here all of them. [12:03] Right? [12:04] That's exactly the same one which you have in our Obsidian, all of those six projects. [12:09] Right, and here we can store information, store our context about this project, and we can directly use it in Cloud. [12:18] To make it more personal. [12:19] That's just mind-blowing possibilities right here. [12:23] So you don't have to like re-explain the context each time. [12:26] Like you go to charge GPT and it doesn't know who you are. [12:29] Right? [12:30] And this system just solves this problem. [12:32] Right? [12:33] Let's actually maybe do some tasks. [12:35] So we have this Kanban board. [12:38] Let's say, okay, where is this Kanban board, Kanban? [12:41] Right? [12:43] So what are my tasks which are in progress? [12:45] And let's say I want to add a new task. [12:47] So I want to add a new new tasks in progress, right now I'm working on a video about how to use Cloud Code for non-coding cases as a personal assistant. [13:00] And let's add it to my tasks. [13:03] Good. [13:04] Okay, and it has like all of my tasks. [13:07] Right? [13:07] And it like exactly the same, the same output. [13:10] Right? [13:11] And I can just like manage my tasks. [13:12] And here it just created a file, record Cloud Code personal assistant video, and that's what I'm doing right now. [13:19] That's extremely powerful. [13:20] Can you put it into my calendar at, let's say, 3:00 p.m. to record this video, can you schedule it? [13:27] Now we can combine those concepts, we can not only create files, but we can also interact with external systems such as calendar, do reminders, right? [13:35] Okay, and let's wait for it to appear. [13:38] And there you are. [13:40] Now we can combine those concepts. [13:42] We can actually take actions. [13:44] It's very powerful. [13:45] You can also do some work here. [13:46] For example, if you're managing clients, you can also ask about who are my clients who required follow-up. [13:53] Right? [13:54] You can ask about what are you working next this week, who are your clients? [13:57] You can like send emails. [14:00] There you go. [14:01] And that's the client who needs the follow-up. [14:03] Okay, now, if you want Obsidian Vault to use it with your Cloud Code. [14:07] Here I have a PDF guide. [14:10] So you can just follow that and you'll be in a very good shape. [14:13] Go through it and it has all of the description, it has like templates for projects, tasks and so on. [14:20] And it has installation instruction, so you can just follow along. [14:24] And if you're very keen and interested about this integration of Cloud Code and Obsidian, you might also be interested in this six weeks lab which I'm running in late January, where we're going to start from scratch, like from the first principles, and set up our system in Obsidian with Cloud Code as a personal assistant, if you need more guidance. [14:43] Now, let's switch gears. [14:43] So once Cloud have your context. [14:47] We can execute workflows and those are called skills. [14:51] Which enable you to to automate like repeatable actions which you might be doing. [14:56] Now, and what is a skill? [14:58] Skill is just a markdown file on your computer, which start in this folder. [15:05] Skills, and that's example. [15:06] That's the name of the skill, daily brief. [15:10] And it has a description. [15:11] And here is example, in our Obsidian, we have skills, task notes skill. [15:18] And it has a markdown file here, which tells how to use and interact with our task notes plugin, that's for Kanban board interaction. [15:30] It has description when we create, update, or delete tasks, we should be using this file. [15:36] Cloud's going to read it and load it into this memory, and then it has a instructions for Cloud how to interact with our tasks base. [15:45] And that's it. [15:47] And you can have a different skills for different setups. [15:51] You can have a client skill. [15:53] Which can be used to manage your client's relationships. [15:56] Right? [15:56] You can just ask about who needs a follow-up. [15:59] And then Cloud's going to know to use this skill and it's going to route this like workflow to follow-ups and then send email, right? [16:11] Or like, if you want to add a new client, you can just ask Cloud, okay, I want to add a client. [16:16] And then Cloud's going to read this file and it's going to understand how to go about your request. [16:21] And here's a system that what I do is typically workflows, where skill you can have like different ways to do it. [16:29] One way is have a targeted tool. [16:32] That's a tool like Xcalidro that enables me to draw those beautiful diagrams here in Obsidian. [16:40] And when I ask Cloud to create a diagram, it's going to use this Xcalidro skill and going to draw the diagram. [16:48] Right? [16:49] And there is another pattern to use skills using skills as a router. [16:53] For example, you take an area of your life, it could be like clients, or it could be reviews, right, like daily reviews, weekly reviews, monthly reviews, and we can use a skill as a router. [17:04] Right? [17:07] And here's the example of daily review router. [17:10] Here is a skill called review. [17:13] And the way it's done is that when user says morning routine or weekly review, it's going to pick up the skill and it's going to route to our morning routine. [17:23] Right? [17:23] And then we're going to go together Cloud through it. [17:27] Let me just show you how it exactly working. [17:32] Okay, let's just clear the chat and start from scratch. [17:36] So hey Cloud, I want to start my morning routine. [17:39] It uses a skill called review. [17:41] Right? [17:41] And it reads this workflow file. [17:44] And it goes together with me when I start my morning. [17:47] Right? [17:48] It. [17:49] Reviews my active tasks, it checks my goals, my projects, my active clients. [17:55] So you can be very creative here and design it the way you want. [17:59] That's just an example, quickly. [18:02] We got some example of morning review. [18:04] Check if there is previous day note, right, check the projects, check the tasks, asks me how I feel, my mood, my energy, how I slept. [18:15] And then in the end we create a note in our Obsidian. [18:18] It asks my list active projects, my tasks. [18:23] My deadlines are coming next week. [18:26] It asks me how I feel. [18:27] Right? [18:27] That's great. [18:28] I can just speak answers like, okay, great energy. [18:32] We feel rested, the focus is content work. [18:35] And we just submit. [18:37] Yeah, let's just drop it up and then I would say just write an write daily note. [18:44] Okay, it just does it. [18:45] We are finished. [18:47] And I believe here in our daily notes, that's our new note which we just created. [18:52] And energy, sleep, everything is good. [18:55] And today focus is a video recording. [18:58] There is tasks from yesterday. [19:00] That's very powerful. [19:02] You just need to be very creative how can you apply this to your specific use case. [19:06] Yeah, and I want you to show you if you'll be doing this every day. [19:10] That's my actual Obsidian vault, I've been doing that for the last two years, just doing my notes. [19:16] And it's been very much compounding. [19:18] And you can build this interactive graph with all your context with active projects and make actual use of your notes, not just storing them here, but actually make them work for you. [19:33] That's the most valuable information, that's your personal context. [19:37] Yes, I've made this free starter kit, feel free to grab it. [19:40] Follow along. [19:42] Yeah, and if you want a full system build, join us on January 27th, where we're going to start from complete scratch. [19:48] Yeah, and feel free to join our Discord server. [19:51] Here we have discussions how to use those novel tools which are just emerging for as a personal assistant to help us to do better in life. [20:02] You know, deliver more value to our clients, to do better at work, to have better relationships. [20:08] Yeah. [20:08] Now what I want you to do is just go and open your terminal on your computer, right? [20:14] Download Cloud Code and just start interacting with the system just to see what's possible. [20:20] Right? [20:20] So one way is just I'm telling you what you can do, that might be exciting. [20:25] But the best feeling is when you actually try it yourself and understand what's possible, what are its limitations. [20:32] And just start exploring and that's just the best way to learn. [20:35] I hope you had a great time and I'll see you in the next one. </details>