Welcome to Loop
How lessons work on Loop, in three minutes.
Loop is SV Academy's free lesson library. Every lesson here is built to the same shape. Learn that shape once and you can move fast, or skip a lesson that is not for you. This is the three minute tour.
- The opening line, which says what you walk away with.
- Why this matters: the problem, in one paragraph.
- Before and after: your week without this, then with it.
- What you need: the short shopping list.
- Steps: the lesson itself, one card at a time.
- Use cases: three people, three different jobs.
- Try it: three practice prompts, and you pick one.
- What's next: the one lesson to open after this.
Why this matters
Most tutorials waste your first minute. You cannot tell what you will get, how long it takes, or whether it is even for you. So you quit, or you finish something you did not need. Loop lessons follow one pattern every time, so you can skim two sections and decide in twenty seconds.
- You open it and start scrolling.
- You guess whether it fits your work.
- You copy a command you cannot read.
- You quit at minute four with nothing.
- You read one line saying what you get.
- You read before and after, and recognise yourself.
- You check what you need.
- You finish it, or you close it on purpose.
Closing a lesson after twenty seconds is a win. It means the shape did its job and gave you your minute back.
Before and after
Under the first section sit two small blocks: your week without the thing, then your week with it. Drag the divider to slide between the two sides. These blocks are a self test, not a promise. If the after block is not something you want, close the lesson and pick another. That is a good outcome, not a failure.
Read the before block first. If none of those lines sound like your own week, this lesson is not for you.
- You skim two sections and know if it is for you.
- You finish one lesson with a real thing to show.
- You leave with a prompt you use again next week.
- You open ten tutorials and finish none.
- You copy a command and never learn what it did.
- You learn something and forget it by Friday.
Drag to compare
What you need
- A web browser and about three minutes
- Loop itself, at loop.sv-academy.org
- No account, no card, nothing installed yet
- Later lessons want a free Claude account. This one does not.
Lesson two adds a free Claude account. Lesson three adds Claude Code (Claude working inside your own computer). Today you need neither.
Steps
Read the hook and the clock
Every lesson opens with one line saying what you walk away with, plus a difficulty and a time in minutes. Those numbers are honest, not marketing. If the clock says fifteen minutes and you have five, save the lesson for later instead of half doing it.
How lessons work on Loop, in three minutes.1 · easy2 · 3 min3
- 1What you walk away with
- 2How hard it is
- 3How long it takes
Check "Before and after"
This is where you decide, and it takes about twenty seconds. Read the before block, read the after block, then ask yourself whether you want what the after block describes. A no here saves you the next fifteen minutes.
Do the steps with Claude open
The Steps section is the actual lesson. Each step is short on purpose and has at most one box you copy from. Work through them in order with Claude open beside this page, rather than reading everything first and then starting.
Know which box goes where
Some boxes are marked bash and some are marked prompt. A bash box (a command your computer runs) goes into your terminal (the black window where you type commands). A prompt box (the words you write to Claude) goes into the Claude message box. Sending one to the wrong place is the mix-up people make most often.
- Goes into the terminal window.
- It is a command your computer runs.
- You meet these from lesson three onward.
- Goes into the Claude message box.
- It is plain words, written to Claude.
- You can use these today, in any lesson.
A bash box goes in the terminal and a prompt box goes in Claude. That one rule holds for every lesson after this one.
Here's a use case from a lesson I'm reading: [paste it]. Rewrite it for my situation: [de…
Find yourself in "Use cases"
Every lesson has three short stories about real people using one idea for different jobs. Pick the one closest to your life and read only that one. Each story shows the exact words that person typed, so you can copy it and swap in your details.
Here's a use case from a lesson I'm reading: [paste it]. Rewrite it for my situation: [describe your job in one sentence].
Here's a use case from a lesson I'm reading: [paste it]1. Rewrite it for my situation: [describe your job in one sentence]2.
- 1What you copied
- 2Your own situation
Pick one level in "Try it"
The practice section gives you three prompts: Easy, Medium and Hard. Do not run all three. Pick one, run it on something real from your own week, and stop there. One finished attempt beats three skimmed ones.
Follow the "What's next" line
The last section points at exactly one lesson to do after this one. The lessons are ordered, so that chain keeps you out of a lesson that assumes something you skipped. If you feel lost halfway through anything, go back one link.
You can now open any Loop lesson, read three short sections, and decide in about twenty seconds whether it is worth your time.
If not: If it still feels slow, open one lesson and time yourself reading only the hook and the before and after block.
Use cases
Three people, one lesson, three different jobs. Read the story closest to your own life and copy that person's prompt.
Nok has time between the lunch rush and the school run, and nothing else. She sorts by the minute count and only opens lessons under fifteen. By Friday she has finished four, because she never started one she could not finish.
I run a small cafe and I have 20 free minutes a day. Ask me three questions about my week, then tell me the one thing worth handing to AI first.
Arm reads a lot at university and keeps almost none of it. He does the Steps as written, then runs the Try it prompt on his own coursework instead of the example. Because the practice is a real assignment, it sticks.
Explain [the topic from my class] like I'm smart but new to it. Then quiz me with three questions and tell me which answer was weakest.
May designs logos and repeats the same client onboarding every month. She jumps straight to Use cases, finds the freelancer story, and copies that prompt first. Then she saves whatever worked into a file, so six lessons in she has a small library that is genuinely hers.
Here's the message I send every new client: [paste it]. Turn it into a reusable template with blanks I fill in, and explain what goes in each blank.
Try it
Three prompts, three sizes. Pick the one that fits the time you have today. Run it on something real from your own week.
- About five minutes.
- You walk away with one thing to hand over.
- About ten minutes.
- You walk away with your repeated tasks, ranked.
- About twenty minutes.
- You walk away with a thirty day plan.
Running all three levels is how people finish none of them. Pick one, finish it, and close the page.
I'm new to all of this. Ask me five questions about my work, then tell me the one thing AI could take off my plate this week.
Here's my week: [describe it]. Find the three tasks I repeat most, and rank them by how boring they are and how easy they'd be to hand over.
I want to learn this properly: 30 days, 20 minutes a day. Build me a plan, tell me what I should be able to do at day 10, 20 and 30, and what to drop if I fall behind.
What's next
Start with Install Claude. It is the one lesson everything else depends on. You get a free account, the app on your screen, and a first conversation that helps with something real. Fifteen minutes, no card, and the rest of Loop opens up. The two lessons after it add Claude Code. Then comes your first skill: a set of instructions Claude reads and reuses.