01 · Installation

What kind of account

Claude Code needs an account that includes it. There is more than one route, and it is worth knowing which one you are on:

• A paid Claude plan — Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise. This is the route the course assumes, because it is the simplest.
• Console or API access, billed as credits rather than a subscription.
• A supported enterprise provider, if your employer routes Claude through one.

The free chat tier does not include Claude Code. Check this before you install rather than halfway through. The current list is on the setup page.

Worth repeating from module 0: this course is free, using Claude Code is not.

Download the app

Go to claude.com/download and take the build for your platform. You do not need administrator rights for a normal install on either platform.

On a Mac

• Open the downloaded .dmg.
• Drag the Claude icon into your Applications folder.
• That is the whole installation.

On Windows

• Run the downloaded .exe.
• Step through the installer.
• Claude ends up in your Start menu on its own.

If you already work in VS Code

There is a third way in, and for a lot of people it is the right one: the Claude Code extension, which puts the same thing inside the editor you already have open. It installs in VS Code and in VS Code forks such as Cursor. Everything else in this track applies to it — the panel, the diffs, the permission mode, the slash commands are all the same — so read the desktop track and use the extension. Nothing later in the course depends on which of the two you picked.

• You need VS Code 1.94 or later, and the same kind of Claude account described above.
• Press Cmd+Shift+X on a Mac or Ctrl+Shift+X on Windows and Linux to open the Extensions view, search for Claude Code, and install the one published by Anthropic — the identifier is anthropic.claude-code. It is also on the Visual Studio Marketplace, and on Open VSX for editors that do not use Microsoft's marketplace.
• Open it from the Claude icon in the editor toolbar or the activity bar, or from the Command Palette — Cmd+Shift+P / Ctrl+Shift+P, then type Claude Code. If the extension does not appear at all after installing, run Developer: Reload Window from the same palette.
• Sign in on first open, exactly as described below. Then open your claude-course folder as the VS Code workspace — in the extension, the folder you have open is the working directory, so there is no separate folder control to find.

Preflight: what else the course expects

You will not type shell commands on this track, so ask instead. Do it in your first session, once the folder is open:

Check whether git, node, npx, sqlite3 and jq are installed on
this machine, and print each version. Just report — do not
install anything.

Only git is a blocker for the course as a whole. The rest are needed by one or two modules each, and each of those modules repeats the requirement in its You need box — this list exists so you find out now rather than forty minutes into module 10 with a hook that silently does nothing.

If a row is missing and you would rather not install it today, that module is still worth reading: the reasoning in it is the part that transfers, and the commands will still be there next month.

Two later modules put you in a terminal even on this track: module 9 has you run a git command before embedding it in a skill, and module 10 needs a shell to make a hook script executable. Both give you the exact commands. Knowing now that you have git is most of what those need.

Signing in

Open the app. You get a welcome screen with a sign-in choice: email, or Google. If you already have a Claude account, use that one, since your plan is attached to it.

What happens next is a normal browser round trip. Your browser opens, you sign in, you grant the desktop app access, and the browser tells you that you can go back to the app. It is a one-time step. Next launch, you are already in.

What you should be looking at

Once you are on the Code side, the window has three parts you will use constantly: a list of sessions, the conversation where you type, and a control showing the current permission mode. Layouts change between releases, so treat these sketches as things to find rather than positions to memorise — the labels are what stay put, not the coordinates.

Opening your project folder

Claude Code works with one folder open — its working directory. That is where it reads and writes by default, and it is the folder shown in the session.

• Use the folder control at the top of the window, or press Cmd+O on a Mac, Ctrl+O on Windows.
• Choose the claude-course folder you made in module 0.
• Open it.

From here on you never have to open individual files yourself. Claude opens what it needs when it needs it.

Set the permission mode deliberately

Before your first request, find the permission-mode control and look at what it says. Which mode a new session starts in depends on your plan and your settings, so the honest instruction is not "it will say Manual" — it is "check, and set it yourself".

For this module and the next, put it on the mode that asks before acting (it is usually labelled Manual or Ask). You want the prompts while you are learning what they mean. Module 7 covers all the modes properly and the current list is in the permission modes documentation.

What an approval looks like

You will meet this in module 2, but it is worth recognising before you meet it. When Claude wants to change a file, it shows the change and stops:

Confirm the whole chain

Which folder are you working in? List what is in it.

You should get the path to claude-course and a listing containing hello.html from module 0. That single answer confirms the install, the sign-in, the folder and the read permission all at once.

If the folder is right but the listing is empty, you have opened a different claude-course — check the full path in the answer against where you actually saved the file.

Troubleshooting

These are the ones that actually happen on a first install. If a previous attempt left something half-working, start at the last row.

In VS Code, the same list applies with one addition: if the panel is missing after installing the extension, run Developer: Reload Window from the Command Palette before trying anything else.

Where you are now

Installed, signed in, on the Code side, with the practice folder open and a permission mode you chose on purpose. In module 2 you start giving Claude work, and you commit the result.

What kind of account

Claude Code needs an account that includes it, and there is more than one route:

• A paid Claude plan — Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise. This is the route the course assumes.
• Console or API access, billed as credits.
• A supported enterprise provider, if your employer routes Claude through one.

The free chat tier does not include Claude Code. The current list is on the setup page. This course is free; using Claude Code is not.

Which shell you are typing in

This track uses Bash. Every command below, and in every later terminal module, is written for Bash or zsh.

• macOS — the built-in Terminal runs zsh. Nothing to do.
• Linux — your terminal runs Bash or zsh. Nothing to do.
• Windows — install Git for Windows and use Git Bash, or use WSL. Native PowerShell is a different language: grep, head, wc, single-quoted arguments and shell scripts with a #! line do not work there unchanged, and even && behaves differently across PowerShell versions. Claude Code itself runs fine on Windows; it is the surrounding commands in this course that assume Bash. The supported arrangements are listed under set up on Windows.

The terminal, in four commands

If you have barely used a terminal, this is genuinely all you need for the course.

$ pwd            # which folder am I in?
$ ls             # what is in it?
$ cd some-folder # go somewhere else
$ mkdir new-one  # make a folder

Install on macOS, Linux, WSL or Git Bash

$ curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

The script picks the right build for your system, installs it under ~/.local/bin, and adds that directory to your PATH by editing your shell profile. It installs into your home directory, so a normal install needs no administrator password — if something asks for one, stop and find out why. Under a minute, normally.

Install on Windows without WSL

If you are using Git Bash rather than WSL, the PowerShell installer is the one that places the binary. Run it in an ordinary PowerShell window — administrator is not required:

> irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

irm fetches the install script and iex runs it. Windows may ask whether you really want to execute a script from the internet; that prompt is expected. Then close PowerShell, open Git Bash, and do everything else in this course there.

Check it twice

$ claude --version
$ claude doctor

The first prints a version number. The second checks the installation itself — where the binary came from, whether more than one install is fighting, and how your settings resolve. Run it now while everything is fresh, so that when you run it after a problem you know what a healthy report looks like.

Command not found almost always means the shell has not picked up the new PATH. Open a new terminal before assuming the install failed.

Preflight: what else the course expects

Run this now. It takes ten seconds and it tells you which later modules you can run rather than only read. A command not found here is information, not a failure:

$ git --version
$ node --version
$ npx --version
$ sqlite3 --version
$ jq --version

Only git is a blocker for the course as a whole. The rest are needed by one or two modules each, and each of those modules repeats the requirement in its You need box — this list exists so you find out now rather than forty minutes into module 10 with a hook that silently does nothing.

If a row is missing and you would rather not install it today, that module is still worth reading: the reasoning in it is the part that transfers, and the commands will still be there next month.

Sign in

$ claude auth login

Your browser opens, you sign in, you approve access for the CLI, and the terminal confirms it. The credentials are stored locally, so this is a one-time step. claude auth logout is the reverse. Starting claude without signing in first will also walk you through it. The full command list is in the CLI reference.

Sessions: the thing to get right on day one

This is the single most misunderstood part of the CLI, so read it before you type anything else.

So a session is a place you are in, not a command you run repeatedly. Two consecutive claude "…" invocations do not share a conversation; two messages inside one session do.

Your first session

$ cd ~/Documents/claude-course
$ claude

The prompt changes. From here you are talking to Claude, not to your shell — the blocks below use > for that.

> Which directory are you working in? List what is in it.

> What is in hello.html?

The second question works because both messages are in the same session. Now leave:

> /exit

You are back at your shell prompt, where git, ls and everything else lives. Getting comfortable moving between those two prompts is most of what makes this track feel natural. To come straight back to the conversation you just left:

$ claude -c

One-shot mode, for pipes

When you want an answer in a file or on the end of a pipe, use -p. Without it you are opening an interactive session with a pipe attached, which is not what you meant:

$ claude -p "Explain what hello.html does" > notes.md

One thing to know about -p: there is nobody there to answer a permission prompt. If the task needs an approval you have not pre-authorised, it does not stop and ask y/n — it fails or refuses. Module 7 is about deciding those things in advance, which is what makes non-interactive runs usable.

The working directory is whatever you were in

Claude Code takes the directory you started it from as its project. That is convenient and it is also how people end up running a session somewhere they did not intend.

$ pwd
$ claude

Make pwd a reflex before starting a session, in the same way you check the address on an envelope.

Troubleshooting

These are the ones that actually happen. claude doctor diagnoses most of them for you; the table is here so you can recognise what it is telling you.

Where you are now

A verified install, signed in, and a session you can open, use, leave and resume. Module 2 does real work in it — and commits the result, so that from here on you always have a way back.