Running Claude Code on Windows

The question behind most "claude code windows" searches is whether this is a Mac-only tool, and it is not. Claude Code is a command-line program distributed through npm, and this site has said for a while that it runs on macOS, Linux and Windows with Node.js and a terminal as the only real prerequisites. There is no separate Windows edition to hunt for and no port to wait on.

Installing Claude Code on Windows 10 or 11

The Windows version is not the gate. Node.js is. If Node runs on your machine, the install is the same three steps it is everywhere else, from PowerShell or Windows Terminal:

1. 1

   Install Node.js

   Anything that gives you a working npm on PATH. This is the only step where a Windows-specific decision exists at all, and it is the ordinary one: installer, winget, or a version manager, whichever your team already standardises on.
2. 2

   Install the CLI globally

   npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code. Same package, same command, same registry as on any other platform.
3. 3

   Run it inside a git repository

   cd into a repo and run claude. On first run it walks you through signing in with either a Claude subscription or an Anthropic API key. It wants a git repository, not just a folder, because that is what makes its edits reviewable and reversible.

npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
cd C:\path\to\your\repo
claude

This is the only genuinely Windows-shaped decision in the whole setup, and it is asked far more often than it is answered usefully. Both work. The rule that resolves it is not about Claude Code at all:

None of the above is a Claude Code limitation, which is worth saying plainly because a lot of writing on this topic implies it is one. It is the ordinary cost of running two operating systems on one box, and it applies identically to any other agent CLI you point at the same repository.

Now the part where this site has an interest, stated without decoration. AIDEN is a macOS 12+ desktop app today, on Apple Silicon and Intel, signed and notarized. It is a workspace that drives your own installed Claude Code and Codex CLIs: several agents visible at once, a git worktree per story, a board that outlives the session, and a spec you approve before any code is written. The GUI for Claude Code page is the full description of what it does.

The Windows build is in Microsoft Store certification. That is the whole status, and it is deliberately not a date. Store certification is not a timeline we control, and on this audience a missed date costs more than a vague one. What we will commit to is the email: one message, the day the build is available, to the address you leave below.

The reason people come looking for a desktop app is rarely the install. It is what happens at the third agent, and that problem arrives on Windows exactly as it does on macOS. Two Claude Code sessions pointed at the same checkout overwrite each other's files, stage each other's changes, and fight over the same dev-server port. None of the fixes for that are macOS-only.

The full manual recipe, and what it costs to keep doing it by hand, is in running parallel agents with git worktrees. The progression from terminal tabs to something you can actually keep track of is in managing multiple Claude Code sessions, and how stories queue, branch and become pull requests is in Claude Code orchestration. All three describe techniques first and AIDEN second, which is the honest order for a reader who cannot install AIDEN today.