Lesson Learned in a Novice's First Steps in AI
Learning from scratch. Building is an organic and winding road
The last few days, I have been learning how to deploy AGI. (Artificial General Intelligence) I am not a coder, or I didn’t think I was. I now understand that my knowledge of HTML is part of coding knowledge, like a base starting point. I jumped into learning how to develop agents from an article I read on Medium that recommended using the platform Diffy, but soon I learned that I needed to start more fundamentally by installing Python on my Computer.
I asked Claude how to install Python, and Claude guided me every step of the way. When I encountered error messages, I posted them as a prompt, and Claude guided me through it, which often involved having to install another program, such as GIT, and software like Poetry.
Claude explained what I needed to do to solve it very efficiently!
The day before yesterday, I was going to set up integration with my online store. Claude gave me the entire plan for doing so. Each time I complete one function, I say, “That’s great!” Now, how do I do this? And that’s where I stopped in my tracks because I need to transfer my existing website to a VPS (Virtual Private Hosting).
It took two to three days to install Python, FastAPI, Git, and Poetry using Claude as my developer consultant, and it took 1 to 2 days to purchase the service and establish the ability to log in to the server on Liquid Web. I am still working on C prompt access.
I used Liquid Web in the past, but discontinued it in 2019 due to a service issue that I no longer recall. However, Liquid Web allows one to get started at a very low cost, with add-on costs later.
For some reason, Liquid Web has retained my old user name and password in their system, and this has caused much of the time-wasting confusion. I suggested that the old login information be deleted, to no response. Every time I log in, the username and password from my 2019 discontinued account are displayed, and I have to input the current data.
My problem logging in to the management panels was partially resolved by changing the password. I had to suggest this solution to both Claude AI and the Liquid Web chat panel, which is the source of many wasted hours of my time. Now I realize not to bother with online chat and just use the support email address.
With Claude’s help, I have determined that the rejected C-Prompt login can likely be resolved with a new password that does not have certain special characters. I requested and received the password, but that made the problem worse with both C prompt and File Zilla preventing access to my management portal. I reported this to Claude, who said, once again, that this is a server-side issue that I should not invest my time and effort into trying to solve. Claude said I should upgrade my support request to “URGENT - Complete Server Access Lost After Password Reset.”
And that’s what I did.
I keep bringing up the fact that my old DISCONTINUED account from 2019 is in the system. Every time I log in, this is displayed. Can this be the problem? Does the system auto-convert to my discontinued account that used the same email address (or so I thought- I have since discovered the email addresses are not the same), and close down? Why not delete my old account? I keep asking, but no one answers my question.
Meanwhile, I have downloaded my posts published on Medium into a file. I am hoping it will get interesting when I start integrating them. They say AI can write in any author’s voice, so I am going to ask AI to write in my voice! A great deal of the writing process is in the editing, and a lot of editing is in structuring the content, which begins as a stream of consciousness, which is unorganized content. AI is very good at structure, so I am curious to see how AI can take content from my posts written over many years and organize it into something current. It’s like turning my posts into a LLM. There is no way that I can go back and read all of my posts, but Claude can do so in an instant.
I have barely been paid for my efforts, so I am hoping to use Claude and my past writing to develop an income stream. I don’t yet know how. The process of learning AI involves setting out to do one thing and in the process, having to do many other things, and by the time one gets through that, one’s entire goal has changed.
That does not mean I will stop using my current process, which takes a dive into my stream of consciousness and reorganizes it, but that process, while completely fundamental to my journey, takes a long time to unfold. If AI can use my large backlog of posts to create fresh posts at a more recommended frequency, I hope that it will help to generate a much-needed income stream through sales.
AI provides code, but later on, after I have moved on to another function in the structuring, AI will say that the code is faulty, which often has to do with structural mistakes made by adding the code provided for a particular function, as is, when the instances should be analysed by their functions and placed in the main.py so that all similar functions are grouped.
The most important time-saving tip I have to offer at this point is to learn the proper way to structure your main instructions doc as the first step.
Below are the instructions Claude gave me after I had already completed many of the steps, and each step involved code. The code is given for a particular function, but every object uses basic functions. In your main.pl all functions - from all those individual instructions for accomplishing a specific task - need to be categorically organized.
So the first step is to learn to recognize these functions in the code and to group them correctly in your main.py. If you understand this organization first, it will save time.
This is the organization outline that Claude gave me:
python # main.py file contains ALL of this:
# Section 1: Imports
# Section 2: Database Setup ← This is just ONE part of main.py
# Section 3: Database Models
# Section 4: Pydantic Models
# Section 5: Database Dependency
# Section 6: App Creation
# Section 7: Routes
For setting up the main.py file, you do not need an in-depth understanding of all these functions; you just need to recognize their identifiers. “Import” is easy- It starts with “Import”. Database Setup is also identifiable. Models are also identified as models, as is the Pydantic Model. Database Dependency- also identified. Routes start with@app and include functions like “get”. You can run your code by Claude to make sure it is complete.
You can see by the headers that the doc is organized by the order of the steps in the development process.
The new code Claude gave for integrating my store has been auto-inserted under database dependency. I am learning as I go, but it appears to me that this code placement occurred because I had put the effort into organizing my main.py as the instructions indicate.
