Your First Session with build-cli

Who This Guide Is For

Anyone who has installed build-cli and wants to get productive quickly. This guide is suitable for engineers, business analysts, and managers — you don’t need to write code to get value from build-cli.

What You Will Learn

How to navigate to a project and start a session
How to give build-cli useful context and ask productive questions
How to iterate on responses within a session
How to set up a CLAUDE.md to give every future session project context
Useful commands for managing a session

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Navigate to Your Project

cd path/to/your/project

If you don’t have a specific project yet, create a test folder:

mkdir my-first-session && cd my-first-session

Step 2: Start build-cli

build-cli

You’ll see the build-cli prompt. It’s now ready to receive your requests.

Step 3: Ask Something Useful

build-cli works best when you give it context and a clear task. Try one of these to start:

If you have an existing project:

Describe this codebase. What does it do, what are the main files, and what technologies does it use?

If you’re starting fresh:

I need to write a Python script that reads a CSV file and checks for null values in each column.
The CSV will have a header row. Show me the script and explain each part.

If you’re a manager or analyst (no code needed):

I have a data quality issue: records in our customer table are missing the country field in about
12% of cases. Help me write a clear problem statement and three potential root causes to investigate.

Step 4: Iterate

build-cli remembers the conversation within a session. Follow up naturally:

Can you add a check for duplicate rows as well?

Now explain how I would run this script on Windows.

Step 5: Set Up a CLAUDE.md for Your Project (Recommended)

A CLAUDE.md file tells build-cli about your project so every future session starts with context. Run:

Create a CLAUDE.md for this project. Include the tech stack, main purpose, and any conventions I should follow.

build-cli will generate a draft. Review it, adjust anything that’s off, and save it in your project root. From now on, every session in this project folder will start with that context loaded automatically.

See the CLAUDE.md example articles for reference templates for data governance, dbt projects, ETL pipelines, and SQL analytics projects.

Useful Commands

Command	What it does
`/help`	Show available commands
`/compact`	Summarise the session to free up context
`/clear`	Start a fresh conversation
`Ctrl + C`	Exit build-cli

Verification

You have completed your first session when:

You’ve asked build-cli a question and received a useful response
You’ve followed up at least once within the same session
Optionally: a CLAUDE.md file now exists in your project root

Next Steps

See the Roche AI Manifesto Practice article for DOs and DON’Ts when using AI responsibly
See the Prompts library for ready-made prompts designed for DMDQP tasks
See the Pattern guides for step-by-step workflows for common data engineering scenarios
See the Custom Statusline guide to build a richer status bar for build-cli