Terminal Basics.
Never typed a command into a terminal? Start here. The terminal is a text-based chat with your computer, and six commands cover most of what the workshop needs. By the end of this card, the blinking prompt stops feeling foreign.
- A working mental model for what a terminal actually is, and why Claude Code lives inside one.
- Six commands you'll use daily to move around, look around, and read files without ever opening a window.
- The two shortcuts that change everything Tab completion and the Up arrow, so you stop retyping and start flying.
How this fits in the OS.
A computer running macOS or Windows. Nothing installed yet, no prior command-line experience.
The terminal app already on your computer: Terminal (Mac), Windows Terminal with Ubuntu (Windows), or Git Bash (Windows).
Every later card. Claude Code, your CLIs, your skills, and your agents all live in the terminal. This is the room they live in.
A terminal is a chat window for your computer.
Most people picture the terminal as something for developers: black background, green text, indecipherable wizardry. The reframe is simpler than that.
A terminal is a text-based chat with your computer. Instead of clicking buttons and dragging icons, you type an instruction and the computer types back. If you can send a text message, you have all the muscle memory you need.
For decades, terminals were the only way to use a computer. Then graphical interfaces (windows, icons, the mouse) arrived and most people stopped. Developers kept using them because they are faster for many tasks, especially the kind of work this workshop teaches.
Claude Code lives in the terminal. To use it at full strength, you need to be comfortable here. Six commands and two shortcuts get you most of the way.
You'll hear "terminal" and "shell" used almost interchangeably. The terminal is the window (the app you open). The shell is the program running inside it that reads your commands and responds. On Mac the shell is usually zsh; on Windows with Ubuntu or Git Bash it is bash. They are close cousins, and every command on this card works the same in both. You don't need to think about the distinction. You just need to know that when something says "open a bash terminal," it means the same thing as "open a terminal."
Open it first.
None of this is useful until the window is open. Here is how, on each setup the workshop supports:
| Your computer | How to open the terminal | The shell you get |
|---|---|---|
| Mac | Press Cmd + Space, type "Terminal", press Enter. | zsh |
| Windows (workshop default) | Open Git Bash from the Start menu. | bash |
| Windows (WSL2) | Open Ubuntu, or Windows Terminal and pick the Ubuntu profile. | bash |
Windows opens PowerShell by default, and it is a capable shell for everyday use. The workshop, though, leans on bash: its commands, its scripts, and the install recipes in other cards all assume it. So open Git Bash for workshop work. If you are in PowerShell and a command behaves oddly (a flag is rejected, a script will not run, a path looks wrong), that mismatch is usually why. Switch to Git Bash and try again.
The prompt is the cursor that waits.
When your terminal opens, you'll see a line ending in $ or %. That's the prompt. It tells you the shell is ready: type a command, press Enter, watch the response appear, and the prompt returns. That's the whole loop.
On Mac you'll see something like tyfisk@MacBook-Pro ~ %. On Windows with Ubuntu, tyfisk@LAPTOP:~$. The username sits before the @, the computer's name after it, your current folder location after that. The ~ symbol always means your home folder.
Six commands cover almost everything.
The full guide lists eight. These six are the ones you'll reach for constantly. Learn them, and the rest are a search away.
pwd : where am I?
Prints your current location. Use it whenever you're unsure which folder the terminal is "inside." Think of it as asking the terminal which folder is open right now.
ls : what's here?
Lists the files and folders in the current location. The terminal equivalent of looking inside a folder in Finder or File Explorer. Add ls -la to see hidden files too.
cd : go somewhere.
Changes your current folder. cd Documents moves you into Documents. cd .. goes up one level. cd ~ sends you home from wherever you are. You can chain a full path in one shot: cd ~/Documents/agent-native-os.
mkdir : make a new folder.
Short for "make directory." mkdir my-new-project creates a folder. Add -p to create nested folders all at once: mkdir -p projects/clients/notes.
cat : read a file.
Dumps the contents of a small text file into your terminal. cat CLAUDE.md shows you what's inside without opening a separate app. Good for a quick peek, less useful for long files.
clear : clean the slate.
Wipes the visible terminal output and gives you a fresh empty screen. Nothing is deleted, the history is still there, your view just resets. The shortcut Ctrl + L does the same thing on every platform.
cp copies a file (cp CLAUDE.md CLAUDE.md.backup). mv moves or renames a file (mv old.md new.md). Same idea as copy and rename in Finder, just typed.
Two shortcuts you'll use every minute.
Tab completion. Start typing a folder or file name, press Tab, and the terminal fills in the rest if it can guess. cd Docu + Tab becomes cd Documents/. Press Tab twice to see all possible matches. This single habit prevents most typos and saves hundreds of keystrokes a day. Use it constantly.
Up arrow. The terminal remembers every command you've run. Press the Up arrow to scroll backward through your history. Press Enter to run a previous command again, or edit it first before running. You almost never need to retype anything.
Error messages are information, not failure.
When something goes wrong, the terminal tells you. The messages look intimidating until you read them slowly. They almost always name the problem.
bash: cd: myproject: No such file or directory translates to "you tried to go to a folder called myproject and it doesn't exist." Usually a typo, or you're in the wrong parent folder.
Permission denied means "you don't have access to do that." On Mac or Ubuntu, putting sudo in front of the command runs it as administrator and prompts for your password.
The rule that solves ninety percent of these moments: copy the exact error message and paste it to Claude. It will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it.
Where to go next.
The terminal is the room you will work in. Three natural moves from here: