By Avinash, GenAI Practice Lead | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 of 6

The terminal environment around Claude Code matters as much as Claude Code itself. You spend hours in this environment — the less friction it has, the more thinking you can direct at the actual work.

This part covers everything outside Claude Code: iTerm2, tmux, starship, fzf, and zsh plugins.

iTerm2

Replace macOS Terminal with iTerm2. The reasons that matter for this setup specifically are true 24-bit color rendering (ANSI color gradients in the statusline render correctly), better escape code support (the blinking compaction warning needs this), and mouse support in tmux.

brew install --cask iterm2

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Two settings to configure immediately after installing:

Font — install JetBrains Mono Nerd Font for starship icons and powerline segments:

brew install --cask font-jetbrains-mono-nerd-font

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Then in iTerm2: Settings → Profiles → Text →…