Set up Elements

Install Elements and Claude Code and start your first app.

The first thing we need to do is to install Claude Code onto our computer. Claude Code is a desktop application that lets us chat with the cloud models, and it's going to be what we use to build our applications. You can think of Claude as your agent that will do work on your behalf using just plain English or whatever language you're using, and you can think of elements as the toolkit it will use and the guidance system that makes sure that it does it correctly. Click the button to download it for your operating system, and when it's done downloading, click on the upper right, drag the application into your applications, and since I already have it installed, I'll just stop it here.

On a Mac, you can use command space that'll bring up Spotlight Search. Type the word cloud, and it should be the first entry in the list. Press enter or click that, and it'll open up the cloud application. If you're on Windows, do the same but with the Windows key.

If you haven't created an account with Cloud yet, you'll have to do that. If you open up the application and you're not signed in, it will guide you through that process, or you can go to cloud.com/pricing and pick the middle option for Claude Code Pro. Free doesn't have Claude Code, and so we'll need to pay $20 a month or $17 a month if you do the annual plan. I don't think you'll need Macs to start off.

You can start off with Pro and you can always upgrade it later if you need to. Next, head over to Elements Dev, the website, and click the install link on the top nav bar. We'll sign up for elements with a username that will be public, and you can pick whatever one you want. If you want to be anonymous, that's fine.

And if you're not sure, just click the generate button and it will give you one automatically. Put in your email address, password, accept the agreements, and click verify your email. Next, an email is gonna be sent to the email address that you provided so that we can verify that it's a real email address and that you're not a robot. The email should look Like this, open it up and grab this code and copy it.

Paste it into the form input, and then click the next get the install script. Next, you should see the agent prompt appear, and whenever you see a box that looks like this, it means you can click it, and that will copy the contents to your clipboard so that we can then go over to Claude Code and paste it into the desktop application. So go ahead and click this box. And then head over to Claude Code.

Paste that install script directly into the cloud prompt and press enter, and Cloud should automatically begin installing elements. The whole process shouldn't take more than 20 to 30 seconds. Once Cloud is done installing elements, it will ask you whether you want to create an application, and you can do that by just asking it in plain language. Cloud will create that application in your home directory elements projects folder by default, and it will open up a terminal on the right.

I can press control L and Mac to clear this out a little bit, and it gives me my next instruction. It opens up this terminal in my folder. If I type PWD on a Mac, you'll see the folder is in the elements projects myapp directory. And it wants me to type elements start, so go ahead and type elements start and and and press enter.

This should start it very quickly, and when it does, it will provide you a URL called localhost 4000, and you can click that here. And it will open up a prompt that asks you whether you want to open the link, and you should say, OK. And that will open up a browser inside of the cloud agent editor, and this means that you have been successful. Congratulations, you are now running on elements.