Tutorial Overview
Many scientists use AI coding tools through a browser — copying and pasting between chat and editor. Agentic tools like Claude Code work differently: they run on your machine, read your project, execute your code, and iterate on errors. This hands-on tutorial covers the pros and cons of using a coding agent and how to begin using Claude Code as an R programmer. We’ll look at potential use cases of coding agents for data analysis, improving code reproducibility, and tightening the loop between code outputs and manuscript writing.

Hands-on activities: Optionally, if you’d like to participate in hands-on exercises in the session, you may wish to purchase a Claude Code plan ($20 for a month of access) and have Claude installed on your computer. However, you may also come without doing this, or with a different agent (like OpenAI’s Codex or an open-source tool of your choice)

Reminder: All attendees, please bring a laptop.