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👟 Topic: Installing the 'scariest' AI coding tools in under 10 minutes
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TOPIC
Installing the 'scariest' AI coding tools in under 10 minutes
After a week of planning, researching, and iterating in Google Docs, I finally clicked "Done" on my Product Requirements Document.
No more planning. No more "what ifs."
This week, I wrote my first lines of code for SayMail. Or, should I say, Claude Code did.
I’ll discuss this more in the weeks to come as I test features and get some mockups, but for today, we’ll dive into how to setup project in Cursor to begin with.
My biggest realization was that the "scary" setup everyone talks about with Cursor, took me less than 10 minutes.
Let me show you what happened.
Quick refresher: What’s a PRD?
Last week, I talked about my pre-flight checklist—the planning process before writing any code. The final output of that process is a PRD: a Product Requirements Document.
Think of it as your app's blueprint. It explains:
What the product does (and why)
Who it's for
What features you're building (and which ones you're not)
How everything should work together
Here's a snapshot of mine:
The entire doc is 19 pages. But I didn't write it all at once. I built it over several conversations with Claude, asking questions, iterating on features, and documenting decisions.
In other words, I used AI to create something for AI.
The Cursor setup (easier than you think)
The best AI coding setup takes 10 minutes or less.
Everyone talks about Cursor.
It's the code editor that understands what you're trying to build and helps you write it. But what makes it truly powerful is pairing it with Claude Code, an AI that can actually write and fix code for you from the command line.
The problem? It looks intimidating. Most people see "install via terminal" and immediately think, "This isn't for me."
But I promise: if you can copy and paste, you can set this up.
My actual setup process
Step 1: Download Cursor
Head to cursor.com and download the app. It's free to start.
Step 2: Follow the onboarding
When you first open Cursor, it'll walk you through some basic settings. I just kept the defaults. they work great.
And if ever in doubt, look up a cursor download tutorial on YouTube.
Step 3: Create a new project
On the main screen, click "Open project".
This will prompt you to select a folder where all your code will live, so if you haven’t yet, create one. For best practice, only do lowercase and use “-” for spacing.
Step 4: The "scary" part, installing Claude Code
This is where most people hesitate. But here's all you do:
Go to the Claude Code website
You'll see a command that starts with
curl
Copy that entire line
Open your Terminal within Cursor by doing cmd + j
Paste the command and hit Enter
That's it. Seriously.
The whole installation took maybe 5 minutes on my machine. No errors. No complicated configuration files. Just paste and go.
Step 5: Launch Claude Code
Now, whenever you open Cursor, you can type claude into the terminal and Claude Code launches.
From there, you can tell it what to build, and it starts writing code.
Oh, and if you want a list of all the YouTube videos I watched that help me get started, they’re linked in my AI coding file below!
Just refer 1 friend and it’s all yours.
So…what’s next?
This week, I got my foundation set up. Next week, I'm diving into the actual design what the app will look like, and how users will interact with it.
If I can go from "I've never used Cursor" to "I have a working development environment" in under 10 minutes, you absolutely can too.
The barrier to building isn't as high as you think.
That’s all for today. If you enjoyed this post, share it with a friend!
If they subscribe, I’ll send you my personal AI coding doc!
To refer, use your unique link.
See you next Tuesday 🤝
-Michael Ly
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