Foundations
Module 1.4: Installing Claude Code
All materials can be found at alexcardazzi.github.io.
What Is Claude Code?
You’ve probably used a chat-window AI tool before — you type a question, it types back an answer. Claude Code is different: it works directly inside your files and folders. Instead of copy-pasting code between a chat window and RStudio, you point it at your project, and it can read your scripts, write new code, run code, and edit files directly.
This matters for this course specifically: your process reflections (part of every homework) ask you to describe how you used Claude Code on that assignment. And to be clear, you are required to use Claude Code (or something like it), both in this course and beyond it. AI is now a standard part of the workplace, especially for new grads, so learning to use it well is essential for staying competitive. However, it’s far from perfect, which is why you, as the human, are 100% responsible for its output.
Ways to Run Claude Code
Claude Code is normally used from a terminal — a text-based way of giving your computer instructions instead of clicking buttons — but you have a few options, and any of them is fine for this course:
- RStudio’s Terminal tab: built into RStudio, next to the Console in the bottom-left panel. No extra setup required.
- Your computer’s native terminal: Terminal on Mac, PowerShell or Windows Terminal on Windows, if you’re already comfortable with one.
- A GUI (desktop app) version: Claude Code also has graphical desktop apps if you’d rather not use a command line at all. Check claude.com/claude-code for current availability on your OS.
Whichever you choose, the rest of this course will sometimes describe things in terms of typing commands — if you use the GUI version, the same ideas apply, just through buttons instead of typed commands.
Installing Claude Code
Claude Code is maintained by Anthropic (the company behind the Claude models). Install instructions are OS-specific and occasionally change, so rather than list exact commands here that might go stale, install it by following the current instructions at claude.com/claude-code.
The terminal-based version runs on Node.js. If you don’t already have Node installed, the official instructions will walk you through getting it first — this is a one-time setup step.
A few things to know before you start:
- You’ll need an Anthropic account to log in.
- Claude Code is not free. It requires either a paid subscription or per-token billing — see the syllabus and AI Policy for current pricing and the recommended starting tier. Budget for this the same way you’d budget for a textbook.
- Install it once, on your own machine. You’ll use the same install for the rest of the course.
Checking It Worked
If you’re using a terminal (RStudio’s or your native one), open it and type:
claudeIf it launches and asks you to log in (or greets you if you’re already logged in), you’re set up correctly. If you get a “command not found” error, the install didn’t complete. Go back to the official docs or bring the error to office hours. If you’re using the GUI version, just open the app directly and confirm you can log in.
Note that Claude may also ask: “Is this a project you created or one you trust? (Like your own code, a well-known open source project, or work from your team). If not, take a moment to review what’s in this folder first.” Personally, I do not give Claude access to all of my files/folders. Instead, I first navigate to the folder I want it to work within (e.g., a folder where all of your ECON 311 material will live) before launching it. To do so, I type: cd Documents/school/Spring 20XX/econ311 (or whatever your specific filepath is), and then type claude. In this case, Claude is only given access to files/folders in that folder, but not outside.
Your Course CLAUDE.md
You’ll find the starter CLAUDE.md file on the course website at https://alexcardazzi.github.io/econ311/CLAUDE.md. This is a plain-text file that tells Claude Code the ground rules for how it should help you in this specific class — think of it as instructions you give the tool, not instructions it gives you. You will need to download this file and place it in the folder you are starting Claude from (ideally your course folder located at something like: Documents/school/Spring 20XX/econ311). Alternatively, you can open your notepad app or program, paste the contents of the link into it, and save as “CLAUDE.md” (be sure to not have .txt as the file extension).
Saving the Course Notes
Every lecture page on the course website has a plain-text version you can download (a markdown, or .md, file). Download the ones you want Claude Code to know about and save them in a folder called notes/ inside your course folder, next to ai_logs/ (see below). With the notes saved, Claude can answer questions using the same explanations and code you see in the lectures rather than generic ones from the internet.
Your course CLAUDE.md already has this behavior built in: it tells Claude to look in notes/ first, and to suggest that you create the folder if it is missing. Even so, you should know what it is doing on your behalf.
Session Logs
Your course CLAUDE.md also tells Claude to keep a running log of your work together. It creates an ai_logs/ folder inside your course folder and keeps one file per assignment (for example, ai_logs/hw1.md). At the end of a session, or after an important decision, Claude adds a short dated entry: what you worked on, what you decided and why, the errors you hit, and what is left to do. At the start of your next session, it reads the most recent log so you can pick up where you left off. The log is also candid about who did what, meaning which choices were yours and which began as Claude’s suggestions.
These logs are useful to you, since they are good raw material for the process reflection in each homework (which you must still write yourself). They are also read by the separate Claude session that asks you two questions at the end of your recorded presentation, so they help it ask fair questions.
This behavior is built into your CLAUDE.md anyway, but you should know what it is doing on your behalf. Feel free to open the files in ai_logs/ and read them.