Right now, I see the world divided into two groups: those comfortable with the terminal and markdown, and those who aren't.

Claude Code has been the most transformative technology to my brain that I can remember. It's become my mission to help everyone I interact with see the power of this tool. (cue my kids eye rolls — you're soo unc)

Yes, Anthropic just released Claude Code for Work — and that's great. It'll make this more accessible. But here's the thing: the effort to learn the terminal isn't that much. And I believe if you invest one week learning the basics, your depth of learning will be exponential compared to skipping it.

I think if you skip this part you will be forever behind.

For Those Who Are Intimidated: It's Not That Hard

Start here. Instead of using your Finder, use your terminal just to move around and interact with your file system:

Terminal — zsh
~ $ cd Documents
# change directories — go somewhere
~/Documents $ pwd
/Users/you/Documents
# see where you are right now
~/Documents $ ls -alt
drwxr-xr-x 12 you staff 384 Apr 25 09:12 projects
-rw-r--r-- 1 you staff 2.1K Apr 24 14:30 notes.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 you staff 856 Apr 22 11:05 todo.txt
# see what's in a directory
~/Documents $ open notes.md
# open files — just like double-clicking
~/Documents $ brew install claude-code
~/Documents $ claude
█ Welcome to Claude Code...
# and now you have superpowers

That's the beginning. Then install Claude Code and type claude in your terminal.

When you're lost, just ask Claude for help. It'll help you get superpowers in the terminal too.

Try this prompt

"I just opened Terminal on my Mac for the first time. Walk me through the first 5 commands I should learn to navigate my files."

If that still feels intimidating: I'm here to help.

But I'm curious what you think: Is the terminal-first path worth it? Or is this a short-term view that will age poorly?

PS: It's not lost on me that the most advanced AI we've ever built is accessed through an interface designed before I was born.