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Claude Desktop for Product Managers

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You don’t need to be technical to take this course. This page walks you from nothing to your first lesson, one step at a time. If anything goes sideways, the fixes are at the bottom, and none of them are your fault.

What you need

Section titled “What you need”
  • The Claude Desktop app, installed from claude.ai/download
  • A Claude account on a plan that includes Cowork

That’s the whole list. No coding tools, no terminal, nothing else to install.

Step 1: Get the course folder

Section titled “Step 1: Get the course folder”
  1. Download the course ZIP. One click, no account needed.
  2. Open your Downloads folder and double-click the ZIP. It unpacks into a folder named claude-desktop-for-product-managers-main, right next to it.
  3. Drag that folder somewhere you’ll find again, like your Desktop or Documents.

Inside the folder you’ll see course-materials. That’s your classroom.

Step 2: Point Claude at your classroom

Section titled “Step 2: Point Claude at your classroom”
  1. Open Claude Desktop.
  2. Start a Cowork session.
  3. When it asks which folder to work in, choose the course-materials folder you just unpacked.

Step 3: Say hello

Section titled “Step 3: Say hello”

Paste this in, or just say hi in your own words. Claude knows why you’re here the moment it sees the folder.

I'm starting the course. Read COMPANION_INSTRUCTIONS.md and take me to Module 0.

The button in the corner of that box copies it for you.

From here, Claude takes over: it teaches, paces you, checks your work, and remembers where you left off between sessions. And any time you feel lost, just say “I’m lost”. Claude stops, re-orients you, and offers a way forward. No judgment, no penalty.

Stuck before you even started?

Section titled “Stuck before you even started?”

Paste this into any Claude chat, even on your phone, and Claude becomes your setup guide:

I'm a product manager setting up the "Claude Desktop for Product Managers"
course from https://github.com/deanpeters/claude-desktop-for-product-managers
Ask me whether I'm on Mac or Windows, then walk me through it one step at
a time: downloading the course ZIP from that page, unzipping it, finding
the course-materials folder inside it, opening a Cowork session in Claude
Desktop, and pointing it at that folder. Check each step worked before
moving to the next.

Common snags

Section titled “Common snags”
  • “I don’t see Cowork in Claude Desktop.” Update the app to the latest version, and check that your plan includes Cowork. If it doesn’t, that’s the one upgrade this course needs.
  • “I can’t find the unzipped folder.” It’s almost always still in Downloads, sitting next to the ZIP. Search your computer for course-materials if it’s hiding.
  • “Claude is acting like a coding assistant, not a teacher.” You probably pointed the session at the wrong folder level. Start a new Cowork session and choose the course-materials folder itself, then say “I’m here for the course.”