Claude Code Setup for Complete Beginners (No Code Required)

What you’ll build

A working Claude Code setup on your own machine — installed, logged in, running inside a free IDE, and scoped to a single workspace folder. By the end you’ll have your first agent ready to extend with skills.

What you’ll need

• Mac or PC
• Claude Pro subscription ($20/mo)
• ~20 minutes
• Optional: Wispr Flow for voice dictation (faster than typing your CLAUDE.md prompts)

Step 1: Get Claude Pro

Subscribe at claude.ai/upgrade. Pro is what authorizes Claude Code on your machine. The free tier won’t work for this.

Step 2: Install Claude Code in your terminal

Open the Claude Code install page and copy the install command for your OS.

• Mac: Cmd + Space → type “Terminal” → enter
• Windows: open Terminal / PowerShell

Paste the install command and hit enter. It downloads silently — no output is fine.

Step 3: Log in

In the terminal, type:

claude

It’ll ask you to trust the folder — say yes. Then type login and pick the subscription option. It opens a browser, you authorize, you’re in.

Step 4: Install Antigravity (your IDE)

Claude Code runs in the terminal, but you’ll want a real interface to see files change in real time. Use Antigravity — Google’s free IDE, very similar to VS Code. Download, install, open.

VS Code works too if you already have it. Either is fine.

Step 5: Create a scoped workspace folder

In Antigravity: File → Open Folder → create a new folder anywhere (call it whatever — axiom, claude-test, doesn’t matter).

This folder is your agent’s entire world. Claude Code can only read, write, and run commands inside it. Nothing outside this folder is reachable — which is why it’s safe to give it broad permissions.

Step 6: Install the Claude Code extension + enable bypass permissions

Inside Antigravity:

1. Go to Extensions → search “Claude Code for VS” → install
2. Click the gear icon → toggle Allow dangerously skip permissions ON

Sounds aggressive. It’s not — the agent is locked to this one folder. Without this toggle, Claude stops to ask permission on every small action and the productivity dies.

Step 7: Build your CLAUDE.md (the agent’s brain)

CLAUDE.md is the only file Claude re-reads on every session. It’s the agent’s identity, rules, and context.

Fastest path to a good one:

1. Open Claude Code Best Practices, copy the entire page
2. In the Claude Code chat panel, paste it
3. Then ramble — voice or typed — about what this agent is for. “My name is Austin, I want you to be my personal assistant, track my email each morning, brief me on finance and AI news…” Keep going for 2-3 minutes
4. Hit enter. Toggle Plan Mode so it asks clarifying questions before generating

It writes your CLAUDE.md based on best practices + your context. Done.

Step 8: Add two universal skills

Skills are reusable automations the agent invokes by name. Two to install on day one:

• /wrap — at the end of each session, tells Claude to update CLAUDE.md with anything it learned, mistakes to avoid, where you left off. Prevents the same explanations on the next session.
• /skill-builder — runs Claude Code’s best practices every time you build a future skill. Compounds quality over time.

Grab both from the free starter repo — copy/paste into your skills folder.

Step 9: Understand the model + token rules

Three models, picked automatically or via /model:

• Haiku — quick questions, small edits, lookups
• Sonnet — default, building docs, most tasks
• Opus — complex multi-file builds, hard debugging, architecting from scratch

Each session has a 200k token context window. CLAUDE.md gets re-read on every message — keep it lean. When you hit the limit it auto-compacts and keeps going. Not a hard stop.

What to build next

Pick one process you do weekly or monthly. Email triage, expense tracking, content drafting, meeting summaries — whatever’s repetitive. That’s your first real skill. Use /skill-builder to make it.

Resources

• Claude Pro
• Claude Code Install Guide
• Claude Code Best Practices — the page to paste verbatim into CLAUDE.md
• Antigravity IDE
• Free starter skills (/wrap, /skill-builder)
• Wispr Flow — voice dictation, 1 free month with this link