Plan and Environment Setup

Good Claude Code work starts before the first prompt. The agent needs a clear plan boundary, a known working directory, and a verification target it can run without guessing.

Choose The Right Access Model

• Use interactive terminal sessions for product work, refactors, debugging, and long-running repo tasks.
• Use headless execution for repeatable tasks with narrow input and predictable output.
• Use remote or mobile controls only when the desktop session already has a clean workspace and branch.
• Keep plan, branch, and verification target visible in the first message.

Installation Baseline

Prefer the official native installer path for your platform. Keep one owner for updates in team environments so prompts, hooks, and permission behavior change deliberately.

After installing or updating, verify the basics:

claude --version
claude doctor
git status --short

The version check confirms what behavior you are debugging against. doctor catches common shell, authentication, and editor integration issues. git status --short makes accidental edits visible before the agent starts.

Repository Setup

Start each repository with three files or conventions:

• CLAUDE.md for durable project rules.
• A test command the agent can run without extra discovery.
• A branch or worktree naming convention for parallel work.

Example first prompt:

Work in this repository only.
Goal: add locale-aware home filtering for English content.
Before editing, inspect routing, source loading, and tests.
After editing, run typecheck and the focused E2E test.
Do not touch unrelated files.

Permission Policy

The best permission policy is boring and explicit. Allow read-only discovery broadly, but keep write operations, network calls, package installs, and destructive shell commands visible. If the project uses denied domains or allowlists, record the reason in team onboarding docs.

Setup Checklist

• The shell opens in the expected repository.
• Authentication is valid.
• The current branch is correct.
• CLAUDE.md exists and is short enough to obey.
• Tests and typecheck can run locally.
• The user knows which commands may be expensive or destructive.