A step-by-step guide. Set-up takes 15–25 minutes — from subscription to your first working request.
If you are in Russia, you need a VPN. Anthropic, the company behind Claude, does not serve users from Russia. Connect a reliable VPN to Europe, the US or Asia (except China) before you sign up, and check that the country has actually changed — I'll show you how below.
It's a tool by Anthropic that lets you talk to an AI assistant while it can see the files on your computer, create new ones and run commands. Unlike the chat on the website, it works right inside your own working environment.
We'll install Claude Code through the Claude Desktop app — the simplest option: download the app, open the Code tab, start working. No terminal, no Node.js, no extensions.
Required · takes five minutes
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Pro | $20 / mo | Enough to get started. Roughly 225 Sonnet messages over 5 hours |
| Max 5× | $100 / mo | 5× higher limits |
| Max 20× | $200 / mo | 20× higher limits |
Buy it at claude.ai/upgrade. The same subscription covers both the chat on the website and Claude Code — you don't pay twice.
Required · while installing and in every working session
Any reliable VPN with a connection to Europe, the US or Asia (except China) will do. Once connected, check your country — the next section explains how.
Optional · but noticeably faster
I use my voice — it speeds things up a lot when a task needs a detailed description. All of these apps do the same thing, turn speech into text, but they do it differently, and it's worth knowing which is which.
This is the kind you'll want for working with Claude. Press a hotkey, speak, and the transcript lands straight in Claude's input field, in an email, in a document — anywhere.
Free tier with a cap: 2,000 words a week on desktop, 1,000 on iPhone, unlimited on Android. Pro is $15 a month, or $12 billed annually.
The easiest place to start: install it once and it works across every app. It adapts to how you speak and strips out the filler words.
Free on local models — no account, no limits, works offline. Pro is $99.99 a year (~$8.33 a month) for cloud models, sync and text clean-up.
The option for people who don't want their voice leaving the machine: the model runs locally. You can also plug in your own OpenAI or Deepgram keys and skip the subscription entirely.
I keep these two for other things. You won't need them for Claude, but people ask about them often enough that the difference is worth spelling out.
There's always a free version. Pro is €64 once, forever, no subscription.
Transcribes existing audio and video files: interviews, call recordings, lectures. Drag a file into the window, get text split by speaker. There is no Windows version.
$69.99 a year, no free tier.
A recorder for everything that happens away from your desk: talk into your phone or straight into your watch, and the transcript plus a short summary arrives by email. Nothing to do with your computer.
If you want one tool and no deliberation, take Wispr Flow: it runs on every device and the free tier is enough to try it. If it matters to you that the recording never leaves your machine, take Spokenly on a local model, for free.
Prices checked in September 2026 — they change, so look at the site before you buy.
Do this before installing and before every Claude Code session. If the VPN drops or switches to an unsupported country, Claude simply stops replying.
Your browser may reach the internet through a proxy and show the "right" country, while the apps themselves — Claude Desktop, Claude Code — go out directly and see your real one. The terminal check shows you what Claude will see.
This is the only place in the guide where you'll need a terminal, and only if you're in a country where Claude doesn't work.
Open whoer.net and find the "Country" line. If it says Russia, turn on the VPN and reload the page. It should show something like the Netherlands, Germany or the US.
Required, even if the browser showed the right country
⌘ + Space, type Terminal and hit Enter.⌘ + V) and hit Enter.curl ipinfo.io/country
You should get a two-letter country code back: NL (Netherlands), DE (Germany), US, FR (France) and so on.
If you get RU, the VPN isn't working at the system level. Turn it on, pick the mode that routes all traffic through the VPN (usually called "System-wide" or "Tunnel all traffic"), and check again.
If the country on whoer.net and the one from curl disagree, trust curl — that's the one Claude will see.
Win + X and choose Terminal (Windows 11) or Windows PowerShell (Windows 10).curl.exe ipinfo.io/country
In PowerShell, curl is an alias for a different command (Invoke-WebRequest) that behaves differently. The real curl is called curl.exe and ships with Windows 10 and 11.
You should get a two-letter country code back: NL, DE, US, FR and so on.
If you get RU, the VPN isn't working at the system level. Switch on the mode that routes all traffic through the VPN ("System-wide", "Tunnel all traffic") and check again.
If the country on whoer.net and the one from curl.exe disagree, trust curl.exe.
The simplest route. No Node.js, no npm, no command line, no extensions — no technical dependencies at all, except one program called Git for Windows, and only for Windows users.
Open claude.com/download and get the macOS build. It's a .dmg file.
.dmg.In the app window, sign in to your Claude account — the one with the Pro or Max subscription on it.
At the top left of the window there are three tabs: Chat, Cowork, Code. Click Code, then New session in the sidebar.
That's it — this is Claude Code with a graphical interface.
Open claude.com/download and get the Windows build. It's an .exe file.
If you're on an ARM-based Windows machine (a Snapdragon laptop, for instance), pick the ARM64 build on the download page.
.exe.The first time you open the Code tab, Claude may ask for Git for Windows — a separate program for tracking file versions that Claude Code uses under the hood.
.exe (Standalone Installer, 64-bit).This is not Node.js: Git is a completely different program. You install it once and forget about it.
In the app window, sign in to your Claude account — the one with the Pro or Max subscription on it.
At the top left of the window there are three tabs: Chat, Cowork, Code. Click Code, then New session in the sidebar.
That's it — this is Claude Code with a graphical interface.
I work through Feature Dev, an official plugin by Anthropic. It's a packaged workflow that walks Claude through seven phases: clarifying questions, architecture, implementation, self-review of the code, summary. Without it Claude starts writing code right away, without asking questions.
In the Claude Desktop app, plugins are installed through a visual directory rather than the /plugin command.
In a Code session, at the bottom left, to the left of the message box, there's a + button. Click it and a menu appears: Slash commands, Connectors, Plugins.
Hover over Plugins and a submenu opens with two items: Manage plugins and + Add plugin. Choose + Add plugin.
The Directory window opens with a list of plugins.
There's a + button on the right of the plugin card. Click it and the plugin installs. If you're asked about scope, User scope is the right choice: the plugin will work across all your projects.
Click + to the left of the message box again → Plugins → Manage plugins: feature-dev should be in the list. You can also type /feature-dev into the message box — a command suggestion should appear.
You start it with /feature-dev (or /feature-dev:feature-dev if several commands share the name). From then on Claude runs the task for you:
From here, just try it: describe an idea and watch it ask questions.
Mostly you just write: type the task, press Enter. Or press your Wispr Flow / Spokenly hotkey and dictate it. Everything else is slash commands.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
/help | The full list of commands |
/clear | Clear the conversation and start fresh |
/permissions | Set what Claude may do without asking |
/memory | Long-term memory: "how to work with me" |
/init | Create CLAUDE.md — a briefing for the project |
/skills | The list of available skills |
Claude asks permission before touching files rather often — that's normal, click Yes. When you get tired of confirming, set up /permissions.
The more detail in the task, the better the result: what you want, why, and what the constraints are.
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Claude is silent or throws a network error | Check the VPN: on whoer.net the country must not be Russia |
| The app won't launch | System Settings → Privacy & Security → allow it to run |
| Windows Defender blocks Claude Desktop | More info → Run anyway |
| Code won't open or asks for Git | Install Git for Windows — step 3 of the installation |
| The browser didn't open during sign-in | Copy the link from the app manually |
| "Limit reached" | Wait an hour or upgrade the subscription |
Your progress is saved in this browser — the ticks will still be here next time.
Stuck on any step? Message me on Telegram.