This applies to Claude Code workshops, where lessons live as files on your machine and you make real edits. Cowork workshops work differently — the guide drives and you direct in conversation, so there's no local file to open. If you're in Cowork, you can skip this page.

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 then tell the workshop to rerun verify. You do that in a graphical editor — not in the Claude Code chat. The editor is yours; Claude Code is the guide. The hands-on edit is the learning moment, which is why the agent doesn't just type it for you.

Picking an editor (one-time setup)

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

• VS Code (free, most popular) — code.visualstudio.com. Download, run the installer, open it once.
• Cursor (VS Code fork with AI features) — cursor.com. Same shape as VS Code; the menu items below are identical.
• JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, WebStorm — paid). If you already use one, fine; otherwise start with VS Code.

If you only have a terminal, nano or vim will get the job done — but for the workshops, a graphical editor is the path of least resistance.

Finding the workshop directory

When lwc setup finishes, it prints the install path (something like ~/learning-with-court/evals-workshop). If you lost the line, lwc list re-prints every installed workshop with its path. Copy the path; that's what you'll point your editor at.

Opening the workshop in VS Code

Pick whichever feels natural:

• Drag the workshop folder onto the VS Code dock icon.
• In VS Code: File → Open Folder... → navigate to the path you copied.
• From the terminal: code <path>, once VS Code has installed its code command-line helper (it'll prompt you the first time you open it, or you can run Shell Command: Install 'code' command in PATH from the command palette).

Finding hidden files

Files that start with a dot — .env, .gitignore, .claude/ — are hidden by most file browsers. VS Code shows them in its file tree by default. In macOS Finder, press Cmd-Shift-. to toggle hidden files on. If you can't see the file the lesson is asking about, you're almost certainly looking at a hidden-files-off view.

Editing and saving

Make your change. Cmd-S on macOS, Ctrl-S on Windows or Linux. Then return to your Claude Code session and rerun verify — Claude Code rereads the file from disk every time, so the save is all it needs.

What not to do

• Don't ask the agent to type the edit for you. In workshops with a block-edits hook, the agent is blocked from editing lesson sources — and the hands-on edit is the point.
• Don't paste new file contents into chat. Chat doesn't save anything to disk; only your editor does.