2.1 β Installation and first launch
Claude Code is an autonomous terminal agent, not just another IDE extension. It lives in your shell, understands your project, and performs concrete actions on your code. Before anything else, you need to install it β it takes less than a minute.
Installation methods
The recommended method on macOS, Linux, and WSL:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
Homebrew alternative on macOS:
brew install --cask claude-code
On Windows, two options:
# PowerShell
irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex
# CMD (nΓ©cessite Git for Windows)
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd
Winget is also available:
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