AI Employee Kit · Setup
Six steps, about half an hour, and you will never open a terminal. If you get stuck at any point, email me and a real person answers.
Two things, and one of them you may already have.
A computer. Mac (macOS 13 or newer) or Windows (10 or 11). Anything from roughly the last five years is fine. The AI runs in the cloud, not on your machine.
On Windows only: install a free program called Git first, from git-scm.com. Click through the installer with the default choices, it takes two minutes. Anthropic's own setup guide says local sessions need it on Windows, so do this before anything else and save yourself the headache. Macs already have it.
A Claude Pro subscription, about $20 a month. The free plan will not run this kit. That subscription is your employee's entire salary, and it is the only recurring cost.
Do them in order. Nothing here requires code, and nothing publishes anywhere without you saying so.
You downloaded a file. It's probably in your Downloads folder, and its name ends in .zip. A zip is a folder that's been squished shut. You have to open it up first.
On a Mac: double-click it. A new folder appears right next to it with the same name, minus the .zip.
On Windows: right-click it, choose Extract All, then click Extract. A new folder appears.
You know it worked when: you can open that new folder and see files inside with names like START-HERE and TRAIN-YOUR-EMPLOYEE. If everything you see still says .zip, it didn't unzip. Try again.
Leave that folder where it is. You'll point Claude at it in a minute.
This is a different app than the Claude you may have used in a browser. The regular one can only talk. This one can actually work with folders on your computer, which is the whole point.
Go to claude.com/claude-code in your browser.
You'll see a big white button that says Download for macOS (or Windows, depending on your computer). That is the one you want. Click it, then install it the way you'd install any app.
Ignore everything below that button. There's a row of small tiles labeled Terminal, Web, iOS, VS Code and so on, under the heading "Other ways to use Claude Code." Those are for programmers. The Terminal one especially will land you in a black window full of text. You don't need any of them.
You know it worked when: the app is installed and you can open it like any other app on your computer.
Open it. It will send you to your web browser to log in, the same way lots of apps do.
Sign in with the Claude account that has the Pro plan on it. If you just signed up through the button above, that's the one.
You know it worked when: the browser says you're signed in and you land back in the app. You only ever do this once.
The app is open but it isn't looking at anything yet. You're going to point it at the folder you unzipped in step 1.
Find the tab that says Code. It sits along the top. Depending on which version you have, it will be next to a tab called Home, or next to ones called Chat and Cowork. It does not matter which. You want Code. The others cannot touch the folders on your computer, which is the entire point of this.
If clicking Code asks you to upgrade, your account isn't on a paid plan yet. Go back and sort that out first.
Then click New session to start a fresh one.
When it asks where to run, choose Local. That means on this computer. The other choices connect to servers somewhere else and you can ignore them forever.
Then click Select folder and pick the kit folder you unzipped. A normal file browser opens, the same one you use to find any file.
You may also see a small model dropdown near the send button. Leave it alone, the default is right.
Heads up: people go hunting for a File menu here. There isn't one. It's the Code tab.
You know it worked when: the app is showing your kit folder instead of an empty starting screen.
Here's the part nobody explains. Now that the folder is open, this app works like a text message conversation. There is a box you can type in, at the bottom of the window. That's where everything happens. You will never type a command anywhere else.
Click in that box and type exactly this, then press Enter:
build my AI employeeThat's it. Plain English. No code, no symbols, nothing to memorize. If you'd rather do this in Spanish, type arma mi empleado de IA instead and the whole setup switches to Spanish.
You know it worked when: Claude writes back and starts asking you questions.
It asks one question at a time, in plain English. What your business is. What work eats your week. What you sell, or what you could sell. You answer like you'd answer a person.
There are no wrong answers and nothing you say here breaks anything. If you don't know, say you don't know, and it'll help you work it out.
While it builds, it will ask your permission before it changes anything. You'll see the proposed change laid out, with Accept and Reject buttons. Click Accept. Nothing is changed on your computer until you do.
This happens because the app starts in what it calls Manual mode, where it checks with you every time. There's more about that just below, because it surprises everyone the first time.
You know it worked when: Claude runs your employee once, right in front of you, and shows you what it made.
The part that surprises people
The first time Claude wants to do something on your computer, a box appears asking if that is okay.
This is not an error and nothing is wrong. It is Claude being careful before touching anything, and it is exactly what you want a tool with access to your computer to do.
Tip nobody tells you: if it's asking too often and you trust what it's doing, press Shift + Tab. That switches it to a mode where it stops asking before every file change. Press it again to cycle back. This one keystroke is the difference between a smooth setup and forty clicks.
Otherwise, click Approve or Accept each time. If it offers "don't ask again," take it. Approving here only lets Claude build your employee on your own machine. It does not publish anything anywhere. Everything your employee produces waits for your approval by default.
Do not skip this
Your employee starts knowing what you told it during setup. That is a start, not a finished thing.
When it gets something wrong, do not just fix the draft. Say it out loud: "too formal." "Never call them clients." "Always mention the free estimate."
Each one of those gets written into your employee's house rules, and it reads those rules before every single shift. So the correction is permanent.
This is the whole difference between an assistant you fight with and one that knows your business. The people who get the least out of this are the ones who silently fix the drafts themselves and never say anything. Their employee is exactly as good in month six as it was on day one.
The full method is in TRAIN-YOUR-EMPLOYEE.md inside your kit. It takes two minutes to read.
These five cover almost everything.
You are probably in the regular Claude chat app or a browser tab. This needs the Claude Code desktop app with your kit folder selected under the Code tab.
Still inside the zip. Unzip first, then open the extracted folder.
That is the programmer version. Close it and download the desktop app instead.
Normal for anything downloaded from the internet. Right-click the file, choose Open, then Open again. Once only.
Almost always the computer was off or shut down at run time. Open your kit folder and say "run today's pass now" to catch up.
Still stuck? Email [email protected] and you get a real answer from a real person. Include what step you are on and what you see on screen.
Want to learn to build these yourself?
I teach it free in my community.
belkiscruz.com · @belcruzbuilds
Some links on this page are referral links, which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only ever link tools I actually use to run my own business. The Claude subscription is required for this kit to work, and you would need it whether you got there through my link or not.
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