You installed Claude Code but the terminal says claude: command not found. It’s almost
always a PATH issue. Try these in order.
1. Restart the terminal
The installer adds claude to your PATH, but the current terminal session doesn’t know
yet. Close it completely and open a new one. This fixes it 90% of the time.
2. Reload your shell config
If you don’t want to reopen:
# macOS / Linux
source ~/.zshrc # or ~/.bashrc
3. Check where it installed
The native installer puts the binary in your user bin folder. Confirm it exists and is on PATH:
# macOS / Linux
ls ~/.local/bin/claude && echo $PATH
If the folder isn’t in $PATH, add it:
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.zshrc && source ~/.zshrc
If you installed with npm
Make sure npm’s global bin is on PATH:
npm config get prefix
Add <that path>/bin (macOS/Linux) or the npm folder (Windows) to your PATH, then restart
the terminal.
Still stuck? Reinstall fresh — see Windows or macOS/Linux.