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Claude Code is a terminal-based AI coding agent that understands your entire codebase. It reads, edits, and runs code directly — no copy-pasting, no context switching. Just describe what you want and Claude gets to work.

Quickstart

Get Claude Code running in under 5 minutes

Installation

Install on macOS, Linux, or Windows

Core Concepts

Understand how Claude Code thinks and acts

CLI Reference

Full reference for all commands and flags

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What Claude Code can do

Read & edit files

Claude reads your source files, makes targeted edits, and previews diffs before applying changes.

Run shell commands

Execute tests, build scripts, git commands, and any shell tool — with configurable permission controls.

Search your codebase

Find files by pattern, search content with regex, and navigate large codebases quickly.

Fetch from the web

Read documentation pages, fetch APIs, and search the web without leaving your terminal.

Spawn sub-agents

Break complex tasks into parallel workstreams with the built-in multi-agent system.

Connect MCP servers

Extend Claude’s capabilities with Model Context Protocol servers for databases, APIs, and more.

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Get started in 3 steps

1

Install Claude Code

Install globally using npm:
npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
2

Authenticate

Run claude in your terminal and sign in with your Anthropic account or API key:
claude
3

Start coding

Navigate to your project and describe what you want to build or fix:
cd my-project
claude "add error handling to the API client"
Claude Code works best when you initialize a CLAUDE.md file in your project. Run /init inside a session to generate one automatically.