How to Install Claude Code: A Beginner's Guide

Claude Code is a new tool that brings Claude's artificial intelligence capabilities to your computer as a virtual programmer who sits alongside you and helps with your projects. Unlike regular chatting with Claude in a browser, where you must copy code back and forth, Claude Code works directly with your files on your computer.

With Claude Code you can:

• Tell Claude what you need to program, and it will do it directly on your computer
• Get explanations for complex code you found online
• Transform your ideas into functional programs without knowing all the technical details
• Quickly create scripts and tools for everyday tasks
• Receive help with debugging and fixing errors in your code

You don't need to be an expert in artificial intelligence or programming – Claude Code is designed so anyone who knows how to launch a command line can use it. But it's worth noting that the better programmer you are and the more you understand your field, the better results you'll achieve.

This first article is intended for complete beginners and will guide you through installing Claude Code. In future parts, we'll explore practical applications, but first we need to master that initial step – getting it up and running. After completing this tutorial, you'll have everything ready and can start experimenting with Claude Code.

Installation based on your operating system

Using macOS or Linux? Great! You can skip directly to the Installing Claude Code section below.

Using Windows? Claude Code doesn't work directly on Windows, but don't worry. Linux is now a native component of Windows through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). You just need to activate it. (But you must have up-to-date Windows.)

Open a console (on Windows, run terminal or cmd) and activate WSL using the command:

wsl --install

Then you need to restart your computer.

After restarting, you can run Linux. Ubuntu will be installed as the default distribution. From the console, simply launch it with the command ubuntu and you'll see the Linux command line. It really is that easy.

Much more useful, however, is the ubuntu run command, which launches Linux initialized in your current directory, such as your project folder, which will be helpful for working with Claude Code.

Installing Node.js and npm (Windows users only)

Since Claude Code is written in Node.js, we need to install Node.js and npm, which is the Node Package Manager. Already have Node.js installed on Windows? You still need to install it in Linux because Claude Code must run in the Linux environment. Linux is so seamlessly integrated with Windows that when you call npm, a Windows application might launch instead. But that's not what we want right now. You can determine which version is running using which npm – you should see a path starting with /usr/bin/ and not something with a Windows path.

Let's install Node.js and npm in the Linux environment:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nodejs
sudo apt install npm

Installing Claude Code

And finally, let's install Claude Code:

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

You might encounter a permission error. It's important not to solve errors by using sudo – instead, consult the troubleshooting on the web.

You can simply launch Claude Code using claude

As you can see from the image, Claude Code immediately asks to connect with your web account for payment purposes. How does payment work? Unlike the web version of Claude, where you pay a monthly subscription (similar to Netflix) regardless of how much you use it, Claude Code operates on a pay-per-use model. You pay for “minutes used.”

More specifically, you pay for the amount of generated text. This is measured in tokens. The more text you send to Claude and the more text Claude generates for you, the more tokens you consume and the more you pay. One token corresponds to approximately 4 characters of text.

To use Claude Code, you don't need to have a paid account for web-based Claude – they are two different services with separate payment systems.

Claude Code guides you directly from the terminal to the Anthropic console. There, log in or register, enter your payment card details, and then copy back to the terminal the key that the website generates for you.

After obtaining the key, you can start using Claude Code to its full potential! In future articles in this series, we'll explore practical applications of this tool.