Partner Basecamp · Session Materials

Prepared for Partner Basecamp participants. Not for reproduction or redistribution as training material — you're free to apply these patterns in your own client work.

This repository contains all notebooks and supporting files for Partner Basecamp sessions. Materials are organized by day and session in the order they run.

Important

Setup is one command. In a terminal at the repo root (the folder that contains day1 and day2), run:

python3 basecamp_setup.py        # macOS / Linux
py basecamp_setup.py             # Windows (or: python basecamp_setup.py)

Follow the prompts: it installs everything, asks for your key, and checks your connection. There's nothing else to install by hand.

Using an AI coding assistant? Ask it to "set up this repo". AGENTS.md tells it to open this script in a terminal window, where you paste your key yourself.

AI agents: your instructions for this repo are in AGENTS.md (Claude Code loads them through CLAUDE.md). Read it before setting up or running anything.

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How to download

Option A — Download as ZIP (no Git required)

1. Click the green Code button at the top right of this page.
2. Select Download ZIP.
3. Unzip the file on your computer — you'll get a Basecamp-Exercises-main folder with everything inside. Some unzip tools nest it one level deeper (Basecamp-Exercises-main/Basecamp-Exercises-main/). The folder you want is the one that directly contains day1, day2 and basecamp_setup.py: that's the repo root the rest of these instructions refer to.

Option B — Clone with Git

git clone https://github.com/victorsteeb/Basecamp-Exercises.git

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⚠️ Run these locally — not in OneDrive, Dropbox, or iCloud Drive

These exercises run on your machine: a local Python environment, local files, a local Git repo. Cloud-sync folders aren't a normal local folder, and putting the exercises in one will break them. Unzip or clone somewhere plain instead — C:\dev\, ~/projects/, your Desktop.

The reason is literal, not just cautionary. With OneDrive's Files On-Demand, your files may not actually be on the disk — they're placeholders that download when opened. A notebook that looks fine in Explorer can be read as truncated, and saving over it destroys the real content, silently. On top of that, sync fights the things setup creates: it locks the thousands of small files in .venv mid-install, and it can corrupt a .git folder outright — Microsoft's own tooling warns about exactly this.

One more, worth knowing: your API key lives in a gitignored .env. .gitignore keeps it out of Git. It does nothing to stop OneDrive uploading it to corporate cloud storage.

Already unzipped into OneDrive? Move the folder somewhere local, delete .venv, and redo setup. Don't try to repair it in place.

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What's inside

Day 1

Folder	Session	Type
day1/01_claude-code-workshop	Claude Code Workshop	Offline guide
day1/02_developer-platform	Developer Platform	Build-Along
day1/03_prompt-rescue	Prompt Rescue	Build-Along
day1/04_diagnosing-ai-problems	Diagnosing AI Problems	Session materials

Day 2

Folder	Session	Type
day2/01_evals	Evals	Build-Along
day2/02_inference-optimization	Inference Optimization	Build-Along

Each folder has its own README with the exercise description and step-by-step run instructions.

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API key

You'll need a key for all build-along sessions: an Anthropic API key, an Amazon Bedrock API key, or a key for your company's gateway. The setup script (below) asks for it and saves it to a gitignored .env at the repo root. Each notebook's setup cell reads it from there and shows a green ✓ verified banner when you're connected. The key lives in .env, never in a notebook cell (notebooks have a way of ending up in client repos), and one .env serves every exercise.

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Where to run

These build-alongs are meant to run in your own tooling, not a browser scratchpad — and never by pasting code out of a chat window:

• VS Code / Cursor — open the folder, then the notebook (Jupyter extension) or run the .py in the terminal.
• Claude Code (CLI) — claude inside the repo: run the .py, or work the exercise with Claude Code as your pair.
• Claude Desktop — keep it open alongside as your AI pair for concepts and debugging.

Each session's README has the exact steps.

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Setup & troubleshooting

1. Open the repo root in VS Code: File → Open Folder and choose the folder that directly contains day1, day2 and basecamp_setup.py (see "How to download" if your unzip made a nested folder). Not a parent folder, not an exercise folder.
2. Run the setup once: open Terminal → New Terminal (it starts in the repo root) and run:

python3 basecamp_setup.py        # macOS / Linux
py basecamp_setup.py             # Windows — or: python basecamp_setup.py if py isn't found

It installs uv if needed, creates .venv with everything the exercises use, registers the Anthropic Basecamp (.venv) kernel, asks for your key, and checks the connection. Your system Python is never touched, and no admin rights are needed. If you hit a wall, SETUP.md is the one-page fix — it covers the VS Code "wrong kernel" trap, corporate proxies, and Bedrock or gateway keys.

Check the SETUP.md file for troubleshooting, Bedrock and gateway keys, and the manual setup steps.