You're likely familiar with using Claude in a web browser. It's a powerful tool for generating ideas, summarizing text, and answering questions. Claude Code takes this a step further by bringing the AI directly into your computer's terminal.

This shift is fundamental. It changes Claude from a passive assistant you copy-paste from into an active collaborator with access to your development environment. This is what 'agentic' means: it has the agency to perform multi-step tasks on your behalf.

Before installing, ensure you have an active subscription. Claude Code is powered by Anthropic's models and requires one of the following:

• A Claude Pro or Max subscription.
• Credits available in your Anthropic Console account (for API users).

Without one of these, the tool will install but won't be able to connect to the AI models needed to function.

The installation process is a single command. Open your terminal and run the command that corresponds to your operating system.

This script downloads and installs the claude command-line interface (CLI) tool onto your system.

With the tool installed, you need to connect it to your Anthropic account. This is a one-time process that authenticates your terminal.

Running this command will automatically open a new tab in your web browser. You'll be prompted to log in to your Anthropic account and authorize the CLI tool. Once you approve it, your terminal is linked.

To confirm that everything is working correctly, you can check the installed version.

If the command returns a version number (e.g., claude/0.1.0), your installation was successful. You are now ready to start using Claude Code.

Now that you're set up, you can start your first interactive session by simply running the claude command.