How I set up Claude Code on day zero
Installing the tool, creating the project, giving Claude access to git. The thirty minutes before the first commit.
The first thing I did was open a terminal and type claude. Nothing happened. The command didn't exist.
That's the whole setup story in one sentence. There's no Claude Code icon to download, no installer to run, no welcome screen. It's a command-line tool. If you've never installed something that way before, the starting point isn't obvious.
I figured it out in about thirty minutes. But those thirty minutes contained three separate moments where I had to find information that wasn't immediately obvious — the kind of stuff you can only know if you've done it before or if someone tells you.
This is the tell-you-first version.
The other thing I realized early: Claude writing code is useful. Claude writing code and committing it to git is a different thing entirely. Once you have that, Claude can build a feature, commit it, push it, and Vercel deploys automatically. You come back to a working site. The setup for that is slightly more involved than just installing Claude Code — but not much.
The rest is for supporters
Pay once, read everything — this post and whatever comes next.
What's inside
- →Exact commands to install Claude Code and authenticate
- →How to initialize a Next.js project and connect it to GitHub
- →The git config Claude needs to commit under your name
- →The one permission you have to grant so Claude can push without asking