reference · editor

editing files in a workshop

Workshops clone to your machine and lessons live as files there — you make real edits in your own editor as you walk each lesson. Here's what "edit this file in your editor" means, which editor to pick, and how to open the workshop directory.

the idea

what "edit this file in your editor" means

A workshop lesson will sometimes ask you to open a file on your computer, change some text, save it, and rerun verify. You do that in a graphical editor, not in the Claude Code chat. This page gets that editor set up; the workshop takes it from there.

one-time setup

picking an editor

If you don't already have one, any of these work:

VS Code is free and the most popular choice. Get it from code.visualstudio.com, run the installer, and open it once.
Cursor is a VS Code fork with built-in AI features, at cursor.com. It works the same way, and the menu items below are identical.
JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ and WebStorm are paid. If you already use one, it works fine; otherwise start with VS Code.

If you only have a terminal, nano or vim will do the job, but a graphical editor is easier for the workshops.

locate

finding the workshop directory

When lwc setup finishes, it prints the install path (something like ~/learning-with-court/<workshop-id>). If you lost the line, re-print every installed workshop with its path:

terminal

$ lwc list

Copy the path; that's what you'll point your editor at.

open

opening the workshop in VS Code

Pick whichever feels natural:

Drag the workshop folder onto the VS Code icon (in the Dock on macOS, the taskbar on Windows).
In VS Code, open File → Open Folder... and navigate to the path you copied.
From the terminal, run code followed by the path you copied — for example, code ~/learning-with-court/mcp. VS Code installs the code command the first time you open the app, or you can add it by running Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH from the command palette.

save & gotchas

seeing hidden files and saving your edits

Files that start with a dot, such as .env, .gitignore, and .claude/, are hidden by most file browsers. VS Code shows them in its file tree by default, so if you opened the folder in VS Code you already see them. If you can't find the file a lesson is asking about, you are almost certainly looking at a view with hidden files turned off. The keystrokes below differ by operating system.

In Finder, press ⌘⇧. (Command + Shift + Period) to show hidden files. Press it again to hide them.

When you're done editing, save the file with ⌘S (Command + S). Then return to your Claude Code session and rerun verify. Claude Code rereads the file from disk every time, so saving is all it needs.

In File Explorer, open the View tab on the ribbon and turn on the Hidden items checkbox.

When you're done editing, save the file with Ctrl+S (Control + S). Then return to your Claude Code session and rerun verify. Claude Code rereads the file from disk every time, so saving is all it needs.