How to install and run Claude Code in VS Code

On November 24th one of my dev friends (hey Maciej!) told me I could run Claude Code in VS Code's terminal. I had no idea. Shame on me I guess. Since then I've been building all the things I always wanted but never had a developer for. Let me show you how to start using it. Install to first prompt in under 5 minutes. Step 1: Open VS Code and the terminal Open your project folder in VS Code. If you don't have a project yet, create an empty folder somewhere and open that. VS Code after opening a project. Ignore the shortcuts for now. Pull up the terminal. Top menu: Terminal > New Terminal. Or just hit Ctrl+ `. This is where you'll type commands and talk to Claude. This terminal at the bottom is where everything happens. All the commands below go here. Step 2: Install Claude Code Same terminal. One command, nothing else to install first. On Mac or Linux: bash curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash On Windows (PowerShell): powershell irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex You'll s