Installation

The essential apps and CLI agents to install before the workshop.

Essentials

The bare minimum needed to follow the workshop hands-on.

Claude Code The AI coding agent we use throughout the workshop. See more agent options below Positron Positron Data-science IDE built on VS Code, with side-by-side source and rendered output. See more IDE options below

Agents

Install one of these 3 AI agents (or all of them if you want to collaborate across platforms):

Agent
Description
Claude Code Anthropic
code reasoning skills & hooks plan mode
Excels at:deep code reasoning, multi-file refactors, and reusable skill-and-hook workflows.
Codex OpenAI
cloud agents images delegation
Excels at:long-horizon cloud delegation and image generation via GPT Image.
Gemini CLI Google
1M-token context images generous free tier
Excels at:very large codebases, image generation via Nano Banana, and a generous free tier.

Note: See GW IT’s list of approved AI tools for more information.

IDEs

Install an IDE based on your preference:

IDE
Description
Positron Positron Posit
data science R & Python rendered output
Excels at:data-science workflows in R and Python, with side-by-side source and rendered output.
Cursor Anysphere
tab completion agent mode inline edits
Excels at:AI-native editing with fast tab completion and a built-in agent mode.
VS Code Microsoft
extensions ubiquitous free
Excels at:being the universal baseline, with the largest extension ecosystem.

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