Chapter 0 - Setup and Requirements

Prepare your development environment for hands-on agentic coding. Choose one tool for this lab: GitHub Copilot CLI or Claude Code.

Reading time: 5 minutes
Practical time: 15 minutes (after completing tool setup)

Prerequisites

1. Choose Your Tool

Tool	Setup Guide
GitHub Copilot CLI	Copilot Enterprise License Request
Claude Code	Claude Code Access via Cloud Subscription

Complete the setup guide for your chosen tool before proceeding. You should be able to launch the tool and get responses to basic prompts.

2. Development Environment

Ensure you have:

Git
Node.js (>= v24)
- Preferably setup NVM to manage different version of Node
Java JDK (v21)
Podman or Docker
An IDE (IntelliJ and/or Webstorm/VSCode)
Your agent harness (Claude Code, Copilot or OpenCode)

Do NOT install these through IDM or waste time searching them.

Setup Your Lab Repository

⚠️ Important: You must create your own personal Git repository for this lab. Copy only the fullstack-onlineshop subfolder to your workspace. Do not work directly in the cloned repository or copy the entire repository.

Clone the demo application and set up your workspace:

bash

# Clone the demo apps repository
git clone https://github.com/msg-CareerPaths/ailabs-demo-apps.git
cd ailabs-demo-apps

# Copy only the fullstack-onlineshop folder to your workspace
cp -r fullstack-onlineshop ~/lab-workspace/
cd ~/lab-workspace/fullstack-onlineshop

# Initialize your own Git repository with only the fullstack-onlineshop code
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit: fullstack-onlineshop lab code"

Next step: Create a personal repository on GitHub and push your code to it. This will allow you to track your progress throughout the lab.

Your project structure should look like this:

/fullstack-onlineshop/
    .claude/           # or .opencode / .github (added in later chapters)
    docker/
    onlineshopapi/
    onlineshopui/
    README.md
    .gitignore
    .mcp.json          # if using Claude (added in later chapters)
    opencode.json      # if using OpenCode (added in later chapters)

For more details on Claude Code folder structure, see Claude Directory Documentation.

Verify Your Setup

Navigate to your lab workspace and launch your agent tool:

bash

cd ~/lab-workspace/fullstack-onlineshop
# Launch your tool (copilot or claude)

Test with this prompt:

Explain what this application does

You should see a response describing the fullstack-onlineshop application structure and purpose.

Chapter 0 - Setup and Requirements ​

Prerequisites ​

1. Choose Your Tool ​

2. Development Environment ​