Yesterday I helped a friend install Claude Code. He typed claude in the terminal, hit Enter, and got:
zsh: command not found: claude
His first reaction: “Did it fail to install?”
His second: ready to uninstall and start over.
I stopped him. Honestly, most Claude Code pain is not in using it — it’s in installing and logging in. And the error messages often don’t tell you the truth.
This is a self-rescue checklist from my own and friends’ crash sites. Match the symptom, copy the command.
Do these three things first — lock down the problem
1. Test the network: can the installer actually download?
Installation is just pulling a binary from downloads.claude.ai. First check whether that domain is reachable:
