The Windows path

Everything in this course runs on Windows. It used to ask you to switch on Microsoft's Linux first — that is gone, and you do not need it. What is below is ordinary Windows software from its ordinary makers, and it is what we watched a real beginner do from start to finish.

Four things trip people up on Windows and none of them mean anything is broken. They are all on this page, each one where you will hit it. If you read nothing else, read the one that fools everybody — it makes a finished install look like a failed one, and it is the reason people start over when they did not need to.

Before you start

• A paid Claude plan. Pro or Max. A free account will install every part of this and then refuse to work. This is the one thing nothing on your machine can check for you.
• Know which email you pay on. If you have more than one Google or email address, it is very easy to sign in with the wrong one. If you do, sign out and sign back in with the right one — nothing is lost, you just lose ten minutes.
• Windows 10 build 19041 or newer (version 2004, May 2020) or any Windows 11. The setup checks this first and stops if you are older, rather than failing halfway through.
• About 2 GB of disk space and half an hour if this is a machine that has never had any of this on it.

Step 1 · The free Claude app

This is Anthropic's own free app, not the course. It is the thing that does the setup for you.

Download it, find it in your downloads, and double-click it. Two boxes usually appear:

Sign in — on the account you pay with — and click the tab marked Code. Chat is the other tab and it cannot do any of this.

Step 2 · Hand it the setup

Paste this into the Code tab and press return. That is the installation.

Then leave it alone. It installs Git for Windows (which is also where the shell that runs the build comes from), Windows Terminal (the Windows equivalent of the iTerm2 you see on the Mac in the lessons), Claude Code from Anthropic's own installer, and ffmpeg. Then it builds your studio and interviews you about your work.

Would rather have a file? Download the Windows setup — one file. Right-click it, choose Extract All, then double-click Run me first (Windows).cmd inside. That does the whole thing with no AI involved at all.

⚠️ Do not double-click the setup-windows.ps1 inside that folder. It will not run, and that is not a broken download — Windows blocks any PowerShell script that arrived from the internet, two different ways. The .cmd file exists to clear both. Use it.

The one thing that fools everybody

You install a program. It works in the window that installed it. You open a new window, type the same thing, and Windows says:

The install did not fail. A terminal window reads the list of installed programs once, when it opens, and never again. A window that was already open has an old list.

This bit everybody because Claude Code's own installer adds itself to the PATH of the window that ran it and nowhere permanent. Our setup writes it into your permanent Windows PATH and then proves it by asking a brand-new window whether it can find the program — so when you see that check pass, believe it, close the old window and open a new one.

And for the rest of your life on Windows: if something you just installed is "not recognized", close the window and open a new one. That is the fix nine times out of ten.

While it runs

• Permission popups arrive in runs. When you get several in a row, tick the boxes and choose "Allow for this session" rather than answering each one. Being asked twenty separate times is not the tool being careful, it is the tool being unusable — and by the tenth you are clicking approve without reading, which is worse than not being asked.
• Keystrokes land in whichever window has focus, and that is not always the one you are looking at. If you have two terminal windows open and typing seems to do nothing, click the window first. This has eaten twenty minutes of a real install.
• It can look frozen and not be. A download with nothing on screen for thirty seconds is a download, not a hang. It prints its progress every fifteen seconds.

The GitHub backup is optional here

On the Mac the setup creates a private GitHub backup as it goes. On Windows it is off by default and that is deliberate. On the first Windows install we watched end to end, signing the GitHub command line in took more wall-clock time than everything else put together, and nothing in the actual filmmaking workflow touches it.

Your work is saved locally with full version history from the first minute either way. When you do want the off-machine backup, say this to Claude on any ordinary day:

One thing to know when you do. GitHub will show you an eight-character code and open your browser. Being signed in to GitHub in Chrome is not the same as being signed in on the command line. They are two separate programs that do not know about each other, and pasting that code in is what joins them up. It takes about twenty seconds and there is no way for anyone to do it for you.

When it is finished

The + button at the top opens a second session side by side, so two jobs can run at once. That is worth knowing on day one and it is what the multi-agent lessons are about.

If Claude refuses to do it

You may paste the link and be told Claude cannot verify it is safe, or that it is not allowed to install software. That is Claude being careful, not Claude finding something wrong. A web page cannot give Claude permission to install things on your computer. Only you can, and you do it by saying so in your own words:

That usually settles it. If it does not, use the downloaded file and the Run me first (Windows).cmd route instead — it installs the identical studio with no AI involved.

If something goes wrong

Ask Claude to verify the install and read you the report. Or do it yourself: open the folder you extracted, right-click an empty part of it, choose Open in Terminal, and run

It checks every part of the installation and prints a report naming each tool and whether it is actually there. Send that report to whoever is helping you — it is designed to be the only thing they need.

Nothing in this setup deletes anything, on any platform. Even the uninstaller only renames. Every step can be run again safely.