AI Developer Toolkit Setup
Learning Objectives
By the end of this session, students should be able to:
- Install and sign into the three AI coding environments we will use all term — Cursor (primary IDE), Claude Code (terminal-native AI), and Gemini CLI (free-tier scripting AI) — and know when to reach for each one.
- Install a Skill and an MCP server into Claude Code / Cursor and describe, in one sentence, what each extension lets the AI do on the student's behalf.
- Recognise and apply the Delegation Rules — know which operations to hand off to AI through a CLI or MCP server, and which (OAuth, DNS, provider-side credentials) the student must do with their own hands.
Core Topics
- Why "natural language is the source code" — course doctrine and how it changes the way students think about programming.
- The three AI environments: Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI — when to use each.
- What MCP servers and Skills are, and how they turn an AI chat into a tool-using agent.
- Voice-first prompting with Wispr Flow (optional but strongly recommended).
- GitHub as the source-of-truth layer that every later week's deploy flow depends on.
Tools / Stack
| Tool | Purpose this term |
|---|---|
| Cursor | Primary IDE; built-in AI chat; all weekly work lives here |
| Claude Code | Terminal-native AI with MCP + Skills; preferred for W8 PDF flow |
| Gemini CLI | Free-tier AI for throwaway scripts and quick explorations |
| Wispr Flow | Voice-to-text; dictate long prompts without typing |
| GitHub | Source of truth; auto-triggers every Vercel deploy |
| Vercel CLI | AI invokes it to deploy, read logs, manage env vars |
| Neon CLI + Neon MCP | AI invokes them to provision databases and auth (from W4) |
| Typst skill | AI invokes it to generate pixel-perfect PDFs (used in W8) |
Session Plan
| Time | Activity |
|---|---|
| 0 – 15 min | Recap & Check-in. First class — no recap. 10-min icebreaker: everyone says what they think "programming" means before and after watching a Cursor demo. |
| 15 – 40 min | Concept Teaching. The Delegation Rules. Why we let AI drive CLIs. What MCP servers are. How voice + AI changes keyboard-heavy work. Live comparison: Cursor vs Claude Code vs Gemini CLI on the same task. |
| 40 – 75 min | Live Demo. Instructor opens Cursor from scratch, installs the Vercel MCP, and tells Cursor to "deploy an empty Next.js site to my Vercel". Class watches the AI call the Vercel CLI, approve, deploy, and return a live URL. |
| 75 – 105 min | Hands-On Lab. Each student repeats the demo on their own laptop and ends with a live *.vercel.app URL they can share. |
| 105 – 120 min | Q&A + Wrap. Troubleshooting as a group. Everyone leaves with working tools. |
Hands-On Lab
Task. Get from "no dev tools installed" to "Cursor just deployed an empty Next.js site to Vercel under my account, and I watched it happen". This is the only lecture with heavier-than-usual manual setup — from Week 2 onwards, almost every step is a single spoken prompt.
If you fall behind during steps 1–4 (installations), don't stress. The goal is to finish Step 7 (your first AI-driven Vercel deploy) before we wrap. Installers can finish while we continue — AI can start working even while Claude Code is still downloading in the background.
Phase 1 — Install the three AI environments
Install Cursor from cursor.com. Open it, sign in with GitHub, and accept the terms. When Cursor asks "Would you like to import VS Code settings?" choose Skip — we want a clean slate.
Why manual: Cursor's installer + GitHub OAuth require clicks and consent screens that no CLI can perform for you.
Install Claude Code by following the official quickstart. On Windows, run the installer and accept defaults. When it prompts for login, sign in with your Anthropic account.
Why manual: Anthropic's login flow opens a browser for consent — human required.
Install Gemini CLI by following Google's readme. Run npm install -g @google/gemini-cli in any terminal (Cursor's built-in terminal works), then gemini login and sign in with your Google account.
Why manual: Installing Node + signing into Google both require consent screens.
Wispr Flow (wisprflow.ai) lets you dictate prompts instead of typing. Everything from Step 5 onwards is a spoken sentence — Wispr Flow makes the rest of this term significantly faster.
Phase 2 — Prove the AI can act
I just installed you. Can you introduce yourself, tell me what tools you have access to (for example, can you run shell commands in a terminal, edit files on disk, and open URLs?), and create a brand-new empty folder called
technest-week-1in my home directory? After creating it, open that folder as the Cursor workspace.
- Cursor reports its capabilities in its own words — take a moment to read them.
- A folder
technest-week-1exists in your home directory. - The Cursor window is now inside that folder (the file-tree pane shows it).
Phase 3 — Install an MCP server so the AI can drive Vercel
Please install the Vercel MCP server so you can call Vercel's API on my behalf. Add it to my Cursor configuration. Once installed, tell me which tools it gives you — I want to see the list. If the MCP server needs me to paste a Vercel token, pause and tell me exactly where to get the token before continuing.
When Cursor pauses and asks for a Vercel token, open vercel.com/account/tokens in your browser, sign in, click Create Token, name it cursor-mcp, copy the token, and paste it back into Cursor's chat.
Why manual: Vercel never exposes account-creation tokens through any API — only the web dashboard.
- Cursor prints the list of Vercel tools it now has (create deployment, read logs, manage env vars, etc.).
- No error messages.
Phase 4 — The "wow" moment
Now prove to me that the delegation model works. Create a brand-new empty Next.js project inside this folder (call it
hello-technest), initialise a git repo, push it to a new public GitHub repo under my account, and deploy it to Vercel using the Vercel MCP. When the deployment is live, open the production URL in my browser. Commit along the way with sensible messages. I'll just watch.
- Your browser opens a live
hello-technest-*.vercel.appURL showing the default Next.js starter page. - A new repo appears on your GitHub account.
- Your local folder has a commit history Cursor wrote for you.
The deployment failed with a build error. Can you read the Vercel build logs through the MCP, find the root cause, fix it, and redeploy? I want the production URL to load without errors before we move on.
Phase 5 — A second AI for variety
Open a terminal,
cdintohello-technest, and confirm you can see the project. Then install the Typst skill from the Anthropic skills registry. When installed, tell me what prompts the skill is now able to handle.
- Claude Code confirms the Typst skill is installed.
- It lists a handful of prompts like "generate a PDF", "compile a typst file". We'll use this in Week 8.
Phase 6 — Internalise the Delegation Rules
Let the AI drive provisioning, env-var plumbing, git, installs, edits, migrations, deploys, and PDF generation — all through CLIs, APIs, MCP servers, and Skills. Do it yourself only for OAuth consent screens, provider-side API-key creation, DNS, and the rare .env.local line where no CLI exists to set it. If you're ever unsure, ask the AI which category a task falls into — this is a perfectly good prompt: "Is this something you can do via a CLI, or do I need to do it myself?"
Weekly Assignment
Build / Implement.
- One live
*.vercel.appURL deployed entirely through AI-invoked CLIs. - A screenshot of your Cursor conversation showing the prompt that kicked off the deploy.
- A second screenshot showing the Vercel MCP tool-call output.
Requirements.
- The repo must exist on your GitHub account.
- The deploy must have been triggered by AI, not by you running
vercel deployby hand. (This is the whole point of the term.) - You must have both Cursor and Claude Code installed, and the Typst skill loaded in Claude Code.
Submission. Post the three artifacts (live URL + two screenshots) in the course Slack channel before the start of Week 2.
Resources
| Docs | Videos | Repos |
|---|---|---|
| Cursor docs — getting started | The instructor's recorded "first AI deploy" demo | her-waka/tutorial/vibe-coding — deeper dive for curious students |
| Claude Code — quickstart | Fireship — "Cursor in 100 seconds" | anthropics/skills — the Skill registry |
| Vercel MCP server — readme | ||
| Wispr Flow — setup |
Real-World Application
Every modern AI-engineering job interview expects you to demo a workflow, not recite syntax. Hiring managers in 2026 want to see a candidate open Cursor, describe a feature, and ship it live in 10 minutes — because that's how senior engineers on their teams already work. Today's lab is exactly that interview artefact: a clip of you dictating a sentence and getting a live URL. Save the screen recording.
LinkedIn bio upgrade for next week: "Full-stack AI developer · I prompt, I ship · vercel.app/my-project".
Challenges & Tips
- "Cursor is asking me to confirm each shell command." Good — in a classroom setting keep manual approvals on. By Week 3 you can enable auto-approve for low-risk commands if you want faster iteration.
- "The MCP server says 'authentication required'." Your Vercel token is missing or expired. Re-paste a fresh token from
vercel.com/account/tokens. - "Gemini CLI says I've hit a rate limit." Use Cursor or Claude Code for the rest of the class. Gemini's free tier resets hourly.
- "I can't tell whether I should do the step myself or ask the AI." Ask: "Can you do this through your tools, or do I need to do it?" The AI will answer honestly.
- "My prompts aren't specific enough — the AI keeps asking follow-ups." Watch the instructor's prompts in this lecture carefully. Good prompts name the tool the AI should use, the inputs it has, and the signal that the task is done.
Paste your last prompt and the AI's last response into a fresh Claude Code window and say: "This didn't work. What's the most likely next step to try, and why?" Treating a stuck AI session like a debuggable object — that you can restart, inspect, and redirect — is the most important skill of this course.