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Claude Code is an agentic coding tool that lives in your terminal, understands your codebase, and helps you code faster by executing routine tasks, explaining complex code, and handling git workflows — all through natural language commands.
Claude Code is even more powerful with the GLM Coding Plan— giving you 3× the usage at a fraction of the cost. Code faster, debug smarter, and manage workflows seamlessly with more tokens, and rock-solid reliability.

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Step 1: Installing the Claude Code

Note: If you encounter permission issues during installation, try using sudo (MacOS/Linux) or running the command prompt as an administrator (Windows) to re-execute the installation command.

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Step 2: Config GLM Coding Plan

1

Get API Key

2

Configure Environment Variables

Set up environment variables using one of the following methods in the macOS Linux or Windows:
Note: Some commands show no output when setting environment variables — that’s normal as long as no errors appear.
  • For first-time use in scripts (Mac/Linux)
  • Manual configuration (Windows MacOS Linux)
Just run the following command in your terminal
curl -O "https://cdn.bigmodel.cn/install/claude_code_zai_env.sh" && bash ./claude_code_zai_env.sh
The script will automatically modify ~/.claude/settings.json to configure the following environment variables
{
    "env": {
        "ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN": "your_zai_api_key",
        "ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL": "https://api.z.ai/api/anthropic",
        "API_TIMEOUT_MS": "3000000"
    }
}

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Step 3: Start with Claude Code

Once the configuration is complete, you can start using Claude Code in your terminal or cmd: 
cd your-project-directory
claude
If prompted with “Do you want to use this API key,” select “Yes.”
After launching, grant Claude Code permission to access files in your folder as shown below: Description You can use Claude Code for development Now!

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FAQ

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How to Switch the Model in Use

Mapping between Claude Code internal model environment variables and GLM models, with the default configuration as follows:
  • ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL: GLM-4.6
  • ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL: GLM-4.6
  • ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL: GLM-4.5-Air
If adjustments are needed, you can directly modify the configuration file (for example, ~/.claude/settings.json in Claude Code) to switch to other models.
It is generally not recommended to manually adjust the model mapping, as hardcoding the model mapping makes it inconvenient to automatically update to the latest model when the GLM Coding Plan models are updated.
  1. Configure ~/.claude/settings.json with the following content:
{
  "env": {
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL": "glm-4.5-air",
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_SONNET_MODEL": "glm-4.6",
    "ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_OPUS_MODEL": "glm-4.6"
  }
}
  1. Open a new terminal window and run claude to start Claude Code, enter /status to check the current model status.
Description

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Vision and Search MCP

Refer to the Vision MCP Server and Search MCP Server documentation; once configured, you can use them in Claude Code.

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Manual Configuration Not Work

If you manually modified the ~/.claude/settings.json configuration file but found the changes did not take effect, refer to the following troubleshooting steps.
  • Close all Claude Code windows, open a new command-line window, and run claude again to start.
  • If the issue persists, try deleting the ~/.claude/settings.json file and then reconfigure the environment variables; Claude Code will automatically generate a new configuration file.
  • Confirm that the JSON format of the configuration file is correct, check the variable names, and ensure there are no missing or extra commas; you can use an online JSON validator tool to check.
We recommend using the latest version of Claude Code. You can check the current version and upgrade with the following commands:
We have verified compatibility with Claude Code 2.0.14 and other versions. 
# Check the current version
claude --version

2.0.14 (Claude Code)

# Upgrade to the latest
claude update