Exercise 01: Setting Up Your Workstation — The Agentic Crew Hands-On Guide

Overview

Before you can contribute to a project, fix a bug, or even read source code properly, you need a working environment. This chapter gets your machine ready — from scratch, on whatever OS you're running.

By the end of this exercise, you'll have a terminal, a package manager, Git, the GitHub CLI, and an AI coding assistant — all ready to go.

AI coding agents live in the terminal. You can't pair-program with an agent if you don't have a place for it to work. Think of this as setting up your workshop before you start building.
— from the exercise

What you'll build

By the end of this exercise

✓ A terminal ready to use (PowerShell, zsh, or bash)

✓ A package manager installed (Homebrew, WinGet, or apt)

✓ Git installed and configured with your identity

✓ GitHub CLI authenticated with your account

✓ An AI coding assistant (Claude Code or Gemini CLI)

Key concepts

Terms you'll learn

Term What it means

Terminal The command-line interface where you'll run everything in this book

Package manager Install software by typing one command instead of downloading installers

Git Version control — tracks every change you make to a project

GitHub CLI Talk to GitHub from your terminal — no browser needed

sudo Run a command as administrator (Linux/macOS)

What's covered

Sections in this exercise

01 Open Your Terminal

02 Install a Package Manager

03 Install Git

04 Configure Git

05 Install the GitHub CLI

06 Authenticate with GitHub

07 Install an AI Coding Assistant

What just happened

You now have a complete development environment. Every tool the AI agent needs to work with you is installed, configured, and verified. This is your workshop — and it's ready for the first real project.