Explain

Terminal + folders (aka “where am I?”)

A shocking number of bugs are actually “I ran the command from the wrong folder.” This explainer gives you the three commands that fix 80% of that pain.

TL;DR

pwd tells you where you are.
ls tells you what’s in the current folder.
cd moves you to the folder you actually meant.

The “project root” rule

When the steps say “save to data/...”, that’s a path relative to your project root: the folder that contains src/, data/, and reports/.

Quick self-check

If you don’t see src/ here, you’re not in the right place.

pwd
ls

Why this matters in Python

If your program tries to open data/raw/matches.json, Python looks for that file relative to your current folder. If you run the program from somewhere else, the file “doesn’t exist” (even if it exists in the project).

A classic error

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'data/raw/matches.json'

The fix

cd into your project root, then rerun the same command.

Example (shape, not your exact path)

cd path/to/your/project
uv run python -m src.scout

Use in Step 00 → Use in Step 03 →