system requirements

the list

You need four things, all of them free:

1. Operating system: macOS, Linux, or Windows. On Windows, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux – a full Linux environment inside Windows, no separate machine needed) is recommended, because agent tools are most stable in a Linux environment.
2. Terminal: the command-line interface where the agents run. On macOS the built-in Terminal (or iTerm2), on Windows the Windows Terminal + WSL, on Linux anything.
3. Node.js (version 22 or newer LTS (Long Term Support – the long-supported, stable release; pick this one, not the very latest)): the agent tools themselves install on top of it, and most web projects run on it too.
4. Git: the version control system. Everything the agent does becomes reviewable and reversible through Git – don't work with an agent without it.

On the hardware side there is no serious demand: the agents work with models running in the cloud; your machine only does editing and running. A machine with 8 GB of memory and 10 GB of free disk is plenty.

check: what's already installed?

Open the terminal and run these three commands (one at a time, with Enter):

node --version
git --version
echo $SHELL

• If node --version prints v22 or higher: you're done.
• If the answer is "command not found": install it as described in the next section.
• echo $SHELL is just informational: which shell (the interpreter behind the terminal – the most common ones are zsh (the macOS default) and bash) you are running.

installing what's missing

macOS: fastest with the Homebrew package manager:

brew install node git

Windows (WSL) and Linux: install WSL first (on Windows: wsl --install in an administrator PowerShell, then restart), then in the Linux terminal:

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y git
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_22.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

After installing, run the check commands again – all three should print a version number.

an editor helps too

The agent works in the terminal, but sometimes you'll want to look at the code yourself. VS Code is free and runs everywhere; Claude Code also has an extension for it. It's not mandatory – every step of this curriculum can be followed from the terminal alone.

If everything is green here, the machine is ready. The next lesson is about accounts and costs: what this actually costs, and how you keep it under control.