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Medical Design Program
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< Hello World >

~20 minutes
Your Claude account + your GitHub account
Zero (Claude writes the code, you make the decisions)

Need a GitHub account? Create one here — it’s free and takes 2 minutes. You just need an email and a username.

What This Is

You’re going to build a personal profile page and publish it to the internet. Today. In about 20 minutes.

This isn’t a web development exercise — it’s a preview of the entire course workflow: describe what you want → get a draft → make it yours → ship it. You’ll do this loop hundreds of times over the next two weeks. This is loop number one.

Step 1: Tell Claude About Yourself

Open Claude and start a new conversation. Copy this prompt and fill in the blanks — or just riff in your own words:

I’m building a simple personal profile page. Here’s what to know about me:

Name:
Where I’m from:
Med school moment that shaped me:
Specialty I’m heading into (and why):
Something non-medical that matters to me:

Based on this, create a clean, modern index.html file for a single-page personal profile. Keep it simple — no frameworks, no external dependencies. Just HTML and CSS in one file. Make it look good.

Step 2: Read It. Then Make It Yours.

Claude will give you an HTML file. Don’t just accept it. Read through it. This is where ownership happens.

Things to try:

  • “Change the color scheme — I want it to feel warmer.”
  • “Add a section about my research interests.”
  • “Make the layout more minimal. Less is more.”
  • “The bio you wrote is too formal. Make it sound like me.”

Push Claude around. It works for you, not the other way around. Iterate until it feels like your page, not a template.

Step 3: Ship It

Time to put it on the internet.

  1. Go to github.com and click “New repository” (the green button or the + icon)
  2. Name it my-profile (or whatever you want — this becomes part of your URL)
  3. Make sure it’s set to Public
  4. Click “Create repository”
  5. Click “uploading an existing file” on the setup page
  6. Drag your index.html file in (or use the file picker). Commit directly to main.
  7. Go to Settings → Pages (in the left sidebar)
  8. Under “Source,” select Deploy from a branch
  9. Branch: main, folder: / (root). Click Save.
  10. Wait 1–2 minutes. Refresh the page. Your site URL will appear at the top:
    https://[your-username].github.io/my-profile/

Stuck? Post a screenshot in #hds-general on Slack. Chances are someone else just figured out the same step.

What to Submit

Post in #hds-general on Slack with three things:

  1. Your live page URL (e.g., https://yourname.github.io/my-profile/)
  2. Your GitHub username (we’ll use this to add you to the course organization on Day 1)
  3. One sentence: what did it feel like to ship something you built with AI?

Why Both Exercises?

Data Detective showed you AI as a thinking partner — exploring data, finding patterns, communicating insights. Hello World shows you AI as a building partner — creating something tangible that lives on the internet.

In this course, you’ll do both. Constantly. Starting Monday.