GitHub isn't just for coders

The word GitHub has probably scared you off building your own tools with AI. It scared me off for months, because it sounded like a programmers-only club.

It turns out GitHub is a storage folder in the cloud for the files behind an app.

When Claude builds you a tool, a quoting calculator or a job tracker, that tool is really a folder of files sitting on your computer. GitHub is where that folder lives online, so the tool isn't trapped on your machine.

You could shove those files into Dropbox instead, but Dropbox can't do anything with them. GitHub keeps every version of your files, and it plugs straight into services that actually run your app.

One of the best known is called Vercel. It's a computer in the cloud that takes your files from GitHub and turns them into a live website.

So you give Claude one instruction. Put this on GitHub, then put it on Vercel. Claude does both and hands you back a link. Anyone on your team opens that link in a browser and they're using your tool, with nothing to download or install.

Once that clicked, I started building.

The scary words are mostly plain ideas wearing intimidating names. GitHub is a folder, and Vercel is the computer that serves it. The jargon does the gatekeeping, and the ideas underneath are simple.

So the next time Claude mentions GitHub, don't back away. Ask it to explain the word like you're twelve, then tell it to carry on building.