Requirements

Install everything on this page before you paste the install prompt from your purchase email. AI Business OS blocks Claude from running system-wide installs such as brew install, so install these tools yourself in a terminal before you start.

Claude

You need a Claude plan that includes Claude Code. AI Business OS and the PRIMA products run in Claude Code, and that is the only setup these pages support.

Note

AI Business OS and the PRIMA products are built for Claude Code, and Claude Desktop, including its Cowork mode, is not a supported way to run them. The workspace also carries AGENTS.md files so that other AI agents, such as Codex, OpenCode or a local open weight model, can work in it. These pages cover Claude Code only, and another agent may behave differently in places. CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md Files explains how they find their instructions.

Software

Software	Needed for	Notes
VS Code	Every product	The editor you open the workspace in
Claude Code extension for VS Code	Every product	Install it from the VS Code extensions panel and sign in with your Claude account
Git	Every product	Tracks your workspace, installs it and delivers updates
jq	AI Business OS, PRIMA Project Management	Reads and writes the JSON state files. The update script and the safety checks depend on it
Node.js 22.5 or later	PRIMA Memory	PRIMA Memory stores its index with the SQLite module built into Node.js 22.5 and later
Node.js 18 or later	PRIMA CRM, PRIMA Scholar, the PRIMA Project Management dashboard	If you install PRIMA Memory, version 22.5 or later covers these too
Python 3	The processing-pdfs skill	The skill also uses the pypdf library and the qpdf command for large files

To install jq on macOS, use Homebrew.

brew install jq

On Linux or inside WSL on Windows, use the package manager.

sudo apt install jq

To check what you already have, run these commands in a terminal. Each one prints a version number if you have that tool.

git --version
jq --version
node --version
python3 --version

Operating System

GenAI Skills Academy builds and tests AI Business OS on macOS, and Linux uses the same tools and the same steps.

On Windows, AI Business OS needs a Unix shell, and WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is the supported route.

1. Open PowerShell as Administrator.
2. Run wsl --install.
3. Restart your computer.
4. In VS Code, install the WSL extension.
5. Click the remote indicator in the bottom-left corner of VS Code and choose to open a folder in WSL.
6. Install Claude Code and the tools above inside WSL.

The update script also runs under Git Bash on Windows, but nobody has tested the other scripts and commands there, so use WSL for day-to-day work. GenAI Skills Academy does not directly support Windows and guarantees no outcome on any operating system.

Where to Keep Your Workspace

Keep the workspace on your computer’s own disk, outside Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and iCloud Drive. A folder such as ~/Documents/example-consulting-biz-os/ is a good place.

Caution

A cloud sync folder can corrupt a git repository without warning. The sync client and git both lock and rewrite the same files, and iCloud Drive can remove local copies of git’s own files to save space, so you can lose commits you have not pushed.

If your workspace is already inside a cloud folder, move it.

1. Copy the workspace folder to a location outside cloud sync.
2. Open the copy in VS Code.
3. Remove the old copy from the cloud folder, or exclude it from sync.

Your git history and any remote repository are not affected by the move.

Large files such as PDFs, Word documents, presentations, images and video belong in your cloud storage. You give Claude the path to them when you need them. The workspace .gitignore keeps these file types out of git.

A Remote Repository (Optional)

You do not need a GitHub account to install AI Business OS. A remote git repository of your own is optional. You need one only if you want to work on the workspace from more than one computer, or to keep a copy away from your own machine. /setup asks for its address so that /sync can check it is pushing to the right place. /day, /sync and /night pull from and push to the origin remote of your workspace, so that remote must point to your own repository. Projects, Workspaces and Repositories explains the difference between the three.

Internet Access

You need internet access to install the products and to receive updates. PRIMA Memory also downloads an embedding model of about 23 MB the first time it runs a search by meaning. Privacy and Your Data explains what that download involves.