Setting Up Claude Code

00:00 After you install Claude Code on your system and you use the claude command to start Claude Code in your terminal, you are greeted by a Welcome to Claude Code screen.

00:10 Depending on your version of Claude Code and the time you are watching this video course, this screen might look a little bit different. So here for me, it’s a cute little ASCII art scene with some kind of alien figure at night, I guess.

00:27 But the important part are the steps that you can now do to set up Claude Code on your system. The first thing is that you can select a text style. It’s not particularly a theme, but it’s like how the text will be displayed in your terminal.

00:44 So depending on how you are styled your terminal, these styles might look a bit different. So I will quickly click through those styles here on my computer.

00:54 The first one is dark mode. This is how a light mode looks, and if you have a look at the bottom, you see how code will be displayed in your terminal. So your task here is to make sure that everything is readable for you.

01:09 So it’s basically a little example how a diff could look. So you have a function text, and then you have a line of code with a light background and a line of code with a green background, and you want to be able to read everything.

01:21 So light mode here is definitely not for me because I can’t really see the function definition. Then there is a color-blind-friendly dark mode with red and blue, a color-blind-friendly light mode, a dark mode with ANSI colors only, and a light mode with ANSI colors only.

01:40 The first preselected option, dark mode, definitely looks the best for me. And once you have selected the text style that looks good on your system, press Enter to go to the next screen.

01:52 On the next step, you are prompted to log into your Claude AI account or to your Anthropic Console account. The Claude AI account is the account that you have when you have a “normal” Claude subscription.

02:06 And the Anthropic console account is an account that you’re having if you want to use the Claude Code via the API. There are differences in the billing methods.

02:16 I’m using the cloud subscription as my login method because my cloud subscription already has Claude Code included. So that is my login method here.

02:28 Depending on your terminal configuration, there will be a browser opening automatically, or you can copy the URL that you are seeing on your screen in your browser.

02:38 You then need to log into your Claude AI account and then authorize Claude Code to connect to your Claude Chat account.

02:50 Once you’re authorized Claude Code, you will see a success message saying something like you are all set up for Claude Code and you can now close this window.

02:59 Perfect. Back in your terminal, you will see the account that you are logged in with and that the login was successful and that you can press Enter to continue.

03:09 So let’s do that. In this step, you will see the security notes. As always with AI, Claude can make mistakes and there are prompt injection risks. So only use Claude Code with code that you trust.

03:26 If you are curious what all of that means in detail, there’s also a link to the Claude Code security page where you can read up more in detail about that.

03:37 Next, in the setup process, you need to adjust Claude Code’s terminal setup. So in this step you can decide to use the recommended settings or setting up things later.

03:49 I recommend to use the recommended settings. So there is a reason why it’s called that way. And what it does is if you are pressing Option + Enter, then you are getting new lines.

04:01 And also there is a visual bell, which is nice to see if something finished. So I will select Yes and press Enter.

04:10 And that’s everything you need to know when you start Claude Code for the first time. After this onboarding process, you are ready to start working with Claude Code in your project folder.