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NOTE: This is a special, more technical edition of the newsletter. I’ll be back to news next time.

I’ve been playing with Claude Code since my podcast with Adam Davidson a couple of weeks ago where he explained how it works. (Apple Podcasts | YouTube).

First, I used it in the exact way he described — to identify files I could delete to clear space on my hard drive — and it worked, but it wasn’t terribly inspiring. I didn’t think I’d use it again … but then, I thought of a task I can do every week: organizing files for video production!

I’ll walk you through it.

Install Claude Code

To begin, you need to install Claude Code on your computer. To do this, you need to either have at least the $20 per month Claude subscription or put in $5 of credits. (I put in $5 of credits.)

I followed the instructions on the Anthropic page, but they weren’t great. I ended up asking ChatGPT for help along the way and eventually got it done, but this video looks better → How to install Claude Code.

This is the hardest part. If you get through this, you’re golden.

Remember: If you get stuck, ask a chatbot what to do next. You can take a screenshot of your screen, upload it, and ask, “What should I do now?”

Define your project

My project: Rename screenshot files with meaningful names that show at a glance the order in which they were taken even if they are moved between systems.

Background: When I make videos for the AI Sidequest podcast, I often want to add screenshots to show what we are talking about. Right now, I do that myself, but I’m hoping my Grammar Girl video editor will take over in a couple of months, and I can’t just give him a dump of files with meaningless names and expect him to figure out where they go.

But if I can give my screenshots names that show what they are about and what order they should appear in the video, he should be able to quickly find the right file for each point in the video.

Do a first pass

Claude Code works in folders on your computer. So in my case, I made a folder with just my screenshots. I called it TestImages. (Don’t included spaces in your folder names.)

To run Claude Code, open the Terminal app on your computer, and navigate to the folder you want to act in, in my case /Desktop/TestImages. So I typed cd Desktop/TestImages (“cd” means “change directory”).

Type claude to start Claude Code.

Then you get a very 1980s-looking interface:

Then I tried this prompt:

Please rename the files in this folder so that the file name represents  what is in the image. Also start each file name with a number. Number the files sequentially so that the oldest file starts with a 1, the second  oldest files starts with a 2, and so on.

It started to work. I could see that it had identified new names for each file, but it kept spinning through, being unable to actually rename them.

Troubleshooting: This is the beauty of LLMs: they can help you solve their own problems.

I stopped the process, pasted in the error message that kept repeating, and asked it how to solve the problem. It told me the solution, implemented it, and finished renaming my files. Success!

I asked it to give me a prompt I can use in the future to avoid the problem (which was caused by the spaces in the screenshot file names), and it added a sentence to the end of the original prompt. I tested the new prompt, and it worked perfectly.

Please rename the files in this folder so that the file name represents  what is in the image. Also start each file name with a number. Number the  files sequentially so that the oldest file starts with a 1, the second  oldest files starts with a 2, and so on. Use wildcard-based renaming or  xargs to handle any special characters in the original filenames.

If I hadn’t insisted on approving every change, the whole process would have taken about 10 seconds. It cost me $0.19 to rename 6 files, which seems like a lot, but it would be free if I had a $20 Claude subscription like I have with ChatGPT. (I’m very likely to switch soon.) And also, is $0.19 really a lot if it’s saving me at least 10 minutes every time I run it?

Side Note: To start, Claude Code asks you to approve every action it takes, so I had to hit “enter” for every attempt it made to rename a file. You can let it bypass approval, which is quicker, but I’m not at that level of comfort with it yet.

Success! So now, every week, I can have well organized, intuitive image files for my video editor. There will likely be times when I want to add an image later, after I’ve sequentially named all the files, but I can add and rename those manually if necessary.

If you want more ideas about how to use Claude Code beyond coding, this article has 18: Everyone should be using Claude Code more.

Claude Code versus Claude

If you’re still wondering what the difference is between Claude Code and Claude, here’s how I understand it:

Claude can respond to your prompts and even give you code.

Claude Code can access an LLM to answer your questions, but it is primarily an interface with your computer and files. That means it can make things happen on your computer. The technical description for this is that Claude Code is a command line interface (CLI).

For example, I uploaded my screenshots to plain old Claude and asked it to rename them in the same way, but it couldn’t. Instead, it wrote code and told me to paste it into my Terminal. Claude Code can do it all, beginning to end.

If you’re intrigued, check out the Claude Code segment of the podcast in the video below or in the audio podcast at Apple Podcasts where the segment starts at the 9:00 mark.

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What is AI Sidequest?

Are you interested in the intersection of AI with language, writing, and culture? With maybe a little consumer business thrown in? Then you’re in the right place!

I’m Mignon Fogarty: I’ve been writing about language for almost 20 years and was the chair of media entrepreneurship in the School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno. I became interested in AI back in 2022 when articles about large language models started flooding my Google alerts. AI Sidequest is where I write about stories I find interesting. I hope you find them interesting too.

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Written by a human