Claude Code — Terminal AI Coding Agent

Overview

Claude Code (v2.1.310 at the time of writing) is Anthropic's agentic coding tool. In a project directory it reads and edits files, runs shell commands and tests, and keeps going until the task is done, asking before risky steps. This skill covers installing it, giving it project instructions (CLAUDE.md and .claude/rules/), controlling permissions, connecting MCP servers, adding hooks, and running it non-interactively. Current docs: https://code.claude.com/docs.

Instructions

Install and start

Use a package manager; auto-updates are off for these, so upgrade them yourself:

brew install --cask claude-code          # macOS/Linux Homebrew (stable channel; claude-code@latest for newest)
winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode      # Windows
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code # needs Node.js 22+; same native binary, never with sudo

Debian, Fedora, RHEL and Alpine have signed apt, dnf and apk repositories (see https://code.claude.com/docs/en/setup). Anthropic also publishes a native installer script; read the setup page and verify what you run before using it. Then: