Report · 1 September 2026

Ken and Beth can run Claude Code

Report for Ken · 1 September 2026 · written by Claude Code on Dil's account

Ken lost four days of work in August. Dil was away, and nobody else could drive the machine. Ken said it plainly on 31 August:

"I need to learn how to operate the machine effectively where I don't F anything up… I'm very good at prompting. What I need is, how do I get my prompt into that machine?"

He has a medical procedure on Friday. So this had to be ready before Thursday. It is ready today, a day early.

Guide writtenYes — and live on the board
Reading levelGrade 3.7 — Ken asked for grade 6
People it covers3 — Ken, Beth, Dil
Jobs left for Dil3, and none take longer than ten minutes

The short version

Ken can now do the job himself. He types what he wants. Claude does the rest.

Three things had to be true for that, and all three are now true.

  1. He has to know where to type. That is a written guide, in plain words.
  2. Claude has to run its own commands. Beth asked for this. It is now set up.
  3. Nobody has to log in to the server. They do not. Not any more, at all.

What we did

1. We wrote the guide

It does not teach Ken how to write an instruction. He is already good at that, and he said so. It teaches him where the instruction goes.

It covers seven things:

We measured the reading level rather than guessing. Ken asked for sixth grade twice in one meeting, so guessing was not good enough. It scores grade 3.7. The short summary that shows on the board scores grade 0.2.

2. We made Claude run its own commands

This was Beth's ask, in her own words:

"I do not want them accessing GitHub and RoseHosting because they are the boss."

She is right, and now neither of them has to. We wrote a list of what Claude may do on its own. The list lives with the files, so it reaches every account by itself. There is nothing to install on anyone's laptop.

Dangerous things still stop and ask. A few things are blocked outright.

3. We found that nobody needs the server at all

This one was a surprise, and it is good news.

We thought one job still needed a person to log in to the server by hand — the part of Josh that answers the phone. It does not. Somebody built a button for it weeks ago and the note describing it was never updated. So the instructions were sending people to a server they did not need to visit.

Claude can press that button. It will ask first, on purpose, because pressing it restarts the phone line and would drop a call in progress.

4. We put it on the board

It sits at the top of the pre-launch board, with the guide and a Word file to print.

⚠️ We tested both links by opening them, not by looking at them. That matters here more than it sounds. On our website a bad link does not show an error page. It quietly shows the front page instead. Ken has lost time to exactly that before, looking for a page that was there all along.

Both links were opened on both web addresses. Both work.


Two things we found by accident

Neither was what we were looking for. Both were worth the detour.

The Word files had a fault

We build Word files from our own notes. Two faults meant the raw code symbols were being printed on the page where a reader could see them.

We fixed both. Measured across three old notes, the stray symbols dropped from 30 to 2, from 12 to 2, and from 44 to 2.

The last two are a third fault, and we left it alone on purpose. It is a different cause, it does not affect this guide, and it is a bigger change to shared code two days before Ken needs this. It is written down so nobody has to find it twice.

A check nobody was running

Dil made a rule on 17 August: the summary line on a report has to read at sixth grade. A check was written to enforce it.

That check was never switched on, and it is failing. Two reports score grade 14.8 against a limit of 6.

We did not fix those two. Rewriting old reports and switching on a failing check is a decision for Dil, not something to slip in. It needed saying, not solving.


What we got wrong, and fixed

Dil sent screenshots of the three accounts, and two things we had written were wrong.

We said Beth might need a login bought for her. She already has one. All three have their own, and nothing is shared.

⚠️ Beth's login starts with the word "ken" and is not Ken's. It is an old company address. The name at the bottom of the screen says Beth. These two are one word apart and they open two different sets of files, so it is worth the ten seconds.

We also said Ken and Beth share the same files. They do not. Ken and Dil share one set. Beth has her own. All three use the same server.

That changes something real. When Ken files his work, Dil sees it. When Beth files hers, nobody else does — she has to tell them. That is now written in the guide.


What is left

Three jobs, all Dil's, none longer than ten minutes.

#JobWhy it matters
1Check Beth can open her files from Claude CodeDo this first. If she cannot, nothing else helps her
2Give Beth's files the same permission listWithout it she is asked to approve every command
3Sit with Ken and do one real job start to finishTen minutes proves the whole thing works

Job 2 is not server work. We first wrote it up as a terminal job. Dil then said he can open Beth's Claude Code — so he asks her Claude to write the file. That is better as well as easier: her Claude can read her own files and match the settings to them. Ours cannot see them.

⚠️ One catch worth knowing. Settings are read when a chat starts. So after the file is saved, Beth must open a new chat. Testing it in the same chat looks like it failed when it did not.


The honest limit

We could not check anything on Beth's side. Her files are not on the account we can reach. We checked, rather than assumed.

So everything about Ken is tested and working. Everything about Beth is written down and untested, and it stays that way until Dil does jobs 1 and 2.


What this means for Ken

The four lost days had one cause: only one person could drive. That is what changed today.

Ken can hand in Patty's call notes himself. He can ask for a report. He can push it to where Dil will read it. If he breaks something, he can say "undo that" and it goes back.

He does not need a server. He does not need GitHub. He does not need Dil in the room.