Getting Started in the Terminal

Claude in the browser is a chat window. Claude Code is the same model given hands: it reads and writes files on your Mac, runs programs, opens a browser, and calls your tools. It lives in the Terminal because that is the only place on a computer where a program can do all of that without a user interface in the way. You will type sentences. It does the typing of commands. This note gets you from nothing to a working session, and stops there. If you would rather skip the typing, the starter pack does all of this with one file dragged into Terminal.

Press Cmd and Space, type Terminal, press Enter. You get a window with a line of text ending in a cursor. That line is the prompt. You type a command, press Enter, something happens. That is the entire interaction model.

Two conventions for the rest of this page: lines starting with $ are things you type, without the $. The tilde ~ means your home folder.

Everything else, Claude does for you. Make your working folder now. Every client gets a folder inside it, and exports go in there.

$ mkdir -p ~/work
$ cd ~/work

Copy each line, paste it into the Terminal, press Enter, wait. Homebrew first. It is the Mac package manager and everything else installs through it. It will ask for your Mac password, and at the end it prints two lines about adding itself to your PATH. Copy and run those two lines exactly as shown.

$ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Then Node, git and jq in one go.

$ brew install node git jq

Then Claude Code itself.

$ curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash
$ claude --version

If a version number prints, you are done installing. If you see command not found, close the Terminal window, open a new one, and try again.

$ cd ~/work
$ claude

A login opens in your browser. Approve it. You are now in a chat that lives inside the Terminal. Three settings to fix before anything else, each typed as a command inside the chat:

Now try it. Type these as plain sentences:

what files are in this folder?

create a folder called acme, and inside it a file called notes.md with today's date in it

open acme in Finder

Watch the Finder window. It did things, not just said things. That is the whole idea.

It will ask permission before running commands at first. Yes, and do not ask again, is fine for reading files and producing reports. Say no to anything that deletes.

It reads one file at the start of every session: ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. Without it, every session starts cold. Ask it to write the first version for you, inside the chat:

create ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md. I am a performance marketer, not a developer. Lead with the number. Be concise. No emojis, no em dashes. Work autonomously on reading files and reports. Ask before anything that changes an ad account, deletes a file, or sends a message. When I correct you, write it down so it does not happen again.

Then the habit that compounds: whenever it does something you dislike, say so in one sentence and add remember this. By week two it knows your accounts, your naming conventions and your voice.

Export yesterday and last week from Ads Manager as CSV into ~/work/acme/. Then:

compare @acme/yesterday.csv to @acme/last-week.csv. What moved, by campaign? Flag anything with CPA over $60.

Twenty minutes in Sheets becomes one sentence. From here the next steps are connecting your tools (Meta, Drive, a browser), installing marketing skills from GitHub, and turning the report you run every morning into a one-word command. That is a longer note. This one ends where it promised to: you are in the Terminal, it works, and you know the six commands.

Never paste an API key, token or password into the chat or a file it can read; ask it to store secrets in the macOS Keychain instead. Keep one folder and one Terminal tab per client; mixing accounts in one conversation is how it gets confused. Use plan mode for anything that changes an account. And never let it delete anything without reading the plan first.